The WWII section of the Dear America series and its spinoffs begins with a "Special Edition" by Barry Denenberg. There's nothing about this book that really makes it a special edition and I can't remember if any others ever were. It's well-written, but the first half takes place in Vienna and Julie's Jewish, so you're in for some hard to read stuff. The epilogue is also hard to read. Very good, very important story, but definitely hard to read.
This is Barry Denenberg again, but this time he fails horribly. He's got engaging, interesting characters, but the book is quite simply TOO SHORT. Not enough time is spent with them, events are covered far too briefly, some things aren't explained and all, and worst of all, the epilogue is pathetic and gives only the barest info about three of the characters. Not even the entire family!
I feel like Denenberg bit off more than he could chew. He was producing a book a year for these series and I'm thinking there were some he rushed through. In 1996, he did the Civil War, then the Irish mill girl (another short one) in 1997. In September 1998, he did the Revolutionary War, followed by the Japanese internment camp in 1999, Julie's diary in 2000 and then this Pearl Harbor one in 2001. I think this was his last gasp and it suffered really terribly for it. Thankfully, the one after was the blind girl and hers was good. I just wish he'd put much more thought into this book and realized how bad the epilogue in particular was. It's like he just didn't care about the characters he created and didn't think that maybe his readers might!
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