AMERICAN GIRL: Claudie Book 2

My review for this book is essentially the same as the first one. I love the characters and the author does a great job with characterization and plot considering the length, but again, the book is WAY TOO SHORT. 

In this one, Claudie is one her way to Georgia to visit her maternal grandmother for the first time. 

She faces the biggest difference between the north and the south during this time period: the blatant racism and danger of the south. 

Most of her time in Georgia is spent dealing with racism, climbing trees a couple times, and learning a bit more about her mother and why she's a reporter. 

Back in Harlem, Claudie has finally found the inspiration for her skit, and she begins work on the variety show immediately. She works hard as the director to bring everything together and do a lot of advertising to boot. And it works! Her skit comes last and Gwen the painter comes up to her backstage right before it to tell her that she saved the boardinghouse. Claudie is so happy that she's almost not nervous onstage. 

Claudie spends a lot of both books thinking about her talent and what it could be. She finally realizes some people are just good at multiple things and not everyone needs a singular skill to make them talented. But she also learns she wants to be a writer and continue to tell her stories. 

I would love to see a third book about Claudie. I wish they were still doing the longer mysteries that BeForever got so we could spend more time in her world. They really screwed her over when it comes to writing. And her collection is pretty small, too. Ugh. Stupid Mattel. I applaud the author for doing such a great job with the short length she worked within. She made me want the doll, which I plan to order sometime this year, along with Dizzy Dot and two outfit sets. 

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!