The books are much shorter than Dear America and they're quick reads. They're not true diary format either. Each begins and ends with a diary entry and there are maybe a couple more scattered in the middle.
There are two types of cover used for the series. The first type is as shown here with the cameo design containing an image of the girl that goes from her head down to about her waist or a bit lower. The second design retains the cameo, but the girls are now shown from about the shoulders up and that's it. I prefer the first design because they're more interesting-looking. The later books look far more plain.
They don't run in chronological order, as most of these series don't, but being numbered, I always read them in the order of their numbering, not chronologically.
The first book stars Sarah Anne Hartford, a girl growing up in Puritan Massachusetts in 1651. Sarah's is actually the first book chronologically as well and no others are set during the 1600s.
Each story does not span many days and deals with one major problem. Sarah and her friend were walking home from church and were caught playing in the snow, which was a pretty punishable offense in their society. Sarah, however, was wearing the coat of her friend's older brother and the people think it was him and not her. She debates with herself for awhile, torn between telling the truth and possibly losing the love of her strict father, who is courting a really nasty woman.
The second book, featuring Emma Eileen Grove, is set in 1865 after the end of the Civil War. Emma, her older brother and younger sister are travelling on a steamboat to St. Louis in search of their uncle. Their father is who knows where after the war and their mother died during it. They harbor a hatred for Yankees and a very poor understanding of what the war was actually about. (I sneer through Civil War stuff that has the characters say the war was about anything but slavery.) There's an accident with the ship and Emma and her younger sister are forced to rely on the help of a black worker and a Yankee soldier to survive. The older Southern woman who befriended them is also revealed to come from a plantation with a nasty reputation, so by the end of the book, Emma's a bit wiser about how people actually are. I still don't like her though!
Anisett is an idiot.
That's pretty much the whole book.
Set in 1851 California during the gold-mining craze, this book tells about Anisett and her mother, who make dinner pails for the miners. Anisett's younger brother is mentally disabled, though it isn't clear exactly how, unlike in certain Dear America books where the boys had Down Syndrome. Anisett finds a gold nugget and doesn't know how to go about staking a claim, so she asks the relatives of a nice new miner she just met. However, she's overheard by this guy who spends the entire book being an utter prick, and he hijacks everyone with plans to take over the claim. The day is saved, of course, by some quick thinking and some outside help, but Anisett is still an idiot. She spends most of the book getting yelled at for daydreaming. Repeatedly. Like screw up a couple times, but how are you supposed to like a character that doesn't seem to ever learn?
This sad copy of the book is the only clear picture I could find of Mary's book. She's in Philadelphia in 1777 and her family are mostly Loyalists, except her brother who was disowned for joining the Patriot army.
So what happens when her delirious, injured brother returns home the same day as the family throws a giant party for the British officers?
I enjoyed this one the most out of these four. Mary's a fun character and she's not annoying like Anisett or ignorant like Emma. Her art is so unattractive though! Poor girl!
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