Margaret Ann Brady's diary was one of the first, possibly actually THE first, Dear America I ever read. I started with the Royal Diaries, then branched out.
Margaret is a great character. She's a sassy orphan, whose only living relative is an older brother, who's over in the US. She's in an English orphanage, through which she ends up with a position as a companion to a rich American woman who's returning home early after the birth of a grandchild.
Margaret gets a whole new wardrobe and gets caught up in the posh life. She takes to things with cheek, instead of being overwhelmed, often exasperating her employer. She really doesn't do that much companioning, mostly walks the little dog.
Margaret makes it off the boat because she's a young girl, but she has to be forced into one of the lifeboats by her steward, a young man named Robert. Their moment before she gets on the boat is so touching, I typically tear up.
This is by far the strongest of the three books.
It was one of the rereleases, as you can see the cover here. I don't like this art of Margaret. That brooding girl on the original cover looks like someone who could be sassy. This yellow dress chick does not.
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Being an English girl, Margaret's book also got into the My Story series (English Dear America). This girl on the cover is a far better Margaret. I'll always favor the original, but this one is definitely good, too.
The My Story version actually has not one but two different reprint covers, but I'm not going to shove them here.
Margaret was one of the lucky four to get a Madame Alexander doll.
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Which unfortunately looks nothing like her. The other three dolls (Caty, Mem and Abigail) were all designed to look like the actresses from the HBO specials, but Margaret's book never got a TV special. Probably would have been a bit too high budget to do! Why they made her look like this then, I'm not sure.
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The Dear Canada book is depressing. At least with most of Margaret's, she's her cheeky fun self, but Dorothy's book begins in May, when she's been punished and removed from her school for the rest of the year. She slapped a brat who told her horrible things about the Titanic, envious of Dorothy's fame. Nasty little thing never did get any comeuppance. I hate that.
Anyway, Dorothy is supposed to write in the diary she was given and tell about what happened on the Titanic, because it might help her. She refuses to do so for quite a bit of the book.
Instead, we get to read about a little girl who has OCD-type behaviors that are clearly from post-traumatic stress disorder. That's not fun.
Eventually, Dorothy gets to her story and we learn that she blames herself for the death of the woman that was chaperoning her. The woman was an employee of her father's and was going to England, so Dorothy's family sent her along and she stayed with her grandparents, then both were to return home on the Titanic. (The parts describing her time with her grandparents are really the only good ones in the book.) The employee woman is rather insufferable and keeps trying to tell Dorothy what to do, which is not right. In retaliation, after being sent back to their room, Dorothy makes a giant mess of the woman's things and then goes to bed. When she wakes, the ship is sinking. The stewardess rushes her out, while another steward is trying to get the woman to realize the seriousness of the situation. Dorothy and the stewardess get into one of the lifeboats and make it to rescue. It's only later that Dorothy realizes the older woman never made it. She blames herself, because she thinks it was the mess that made the woman run so behind and never make it off the ship.
Thankfully, Dorothy's parents are able to track the stewardess down and they surprise Dorothy with a visit from her. While they're talking, it comes out that the stewardess had cleaned up the mess before the employee woman ever got back to the room. So her death wasn't Dorothy's fault at all.
Apologies for the lack of names here, but I'm too lazy to get up and look them up.
This diary has some enjoyable moments, but mostly, it's rather painful to read.
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The final version is from a male point of view. This is a bit of a challenge because there's got to be a good reason for a male protagonist of the age the I Am Canada boys usually are (a bit older) to have made it. Not many men got into the lifeboats.
Jamie's from a well-off family, so this book's got a lot of the same scenery as Margaret's. Jamie's a boy though, so expect the usual boyish trouble. For example, he meets a boy onboard who has a pet rat and the rat escapes, so they chase it, etc.
It's a decent book, but there's something about it that I find much less engaging than Margaret's. Maybe because a lot of these boy-fronted stories seem rushed.
Jamie survives because, while he hits the water, he quickly manages to make it to an overturned lifeboat, which he and a bunch of others stand on for hours until rescue.
The older brother at the end is just a complete asshole, too. I don't think he was a necessary addition.
So. Titanic. Three books. Margaret's is honestly the only one I'd recommend and I do recommend it highly.
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