American Girl Claudie #1

I finally got around to reading Claudie's book! 

I think the easiest way to review this is to break it down. 

PROS: 

1) Excellent characters. I really enjoyed every one of them. I'm impressed they were so well characterized in the short number of pages this poor author had to work with. 

2) I like this time period so it's always good to read more about it. 

3) The author doesn't shy away from the bad things that happened in history during this time. I learned a couple things I never knew about. 

CONS: 

1) LENGTH. This is the book's biggest flaw. I can't believe the author would limit herself in such a way, especially when she's working on a dream project, so I imagine this is some poor corporate choice. This is easily the shortest historical book that we have. It's shorter than GotY books, ffs. It begins with an introduction from the author that takes up five and a quarter pages. It ends with historical notes that take up eight pages. The actual story? A measly 71 pages. And some of those are full-page illustrations. Not that I have anything against illustrations. I love them. But this book is way too short. I'm highly impressed that the author was able to characterize her fairly large cast well enough to make me like them all in such a small number of pages. She does an excellent job with that. She also does a great job of telling some of the historical things that happened. What suffers is the environment. NYC is a character in itself and so are all the neighborhoods that make it up. You love the people of Harlem in this book, but you don't get a chance to fall in love with the setting of Harlem. I would have loved to have seen this be twice as long. There are so many opportunities for added characterization and more scenes out in Harlem itself. It's very disappointing that someone at AG thinks this is an appropriate number of pages to devote to the Harlem Renaissance. 

2) This is another corporate complaint. This book doesn't exist in paperback. You're forced to buy the $16.99 hardcover. And then it's as short as it is. WTF, AG? 

3) One major historical inaccuracy bothered me. There's a note at the front about certain words used to describe Black people being used in this book because those are the words that were used in the 1920s. They're not appropriate now, but those are the words they would have said then. That is perfectly acceptable and the right way to write a historical book. However, Claudie's father is a WWI vet. It's mentioned at least a couple times in the text of the story itself that he was in "World War One." Um, no. This book is set in 1922. They would never have called it World War One. They didn't know there would be a second one! So that took me out of the story the few times I saw it written that way. If you're going to write as if you're in the 20s when it comes to people's words for themselves, then stick with that all the way through. 

4) The second one doesn't come out until next year and there's a lot of important stuff that was left hanging. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this and I wish it was twice as long. Claudie, her fellow cast, the author, and most importantly, this time period deserve better than what AG is giving them. 

I may end up with Claudie. And the dog. And some of her outfits. Next year!