Finishing Up the Reread

The final books! I honestly put some away already and can't remember for sure if this is all of them, but dammit, it's close enough.

After the onslaught of WWII books, it was nice to read something else. Biddy Owens' journal is mostly about baseball, but there's quite a bit of other stuff in there, too, which you can imagine. It's good. I enjoyed it, even for a sports-themed book!

Rose's diary takes place in 1948, after the war, but she's been tasked to write by the father in the third home she's been in since she came to Canada. He wants her to remember what happened to her and write it down, as a means of helping her regain some semblance of normalcy. It's hard to read Rose's diary both because of the Holocaust flashback sections and because the sister in this third home is a bitch. She's a nasty fucking brat who bullies people with her friends. They don't pick on Rose outright, but she never is welcoming to her, which is ridiculous. That's not how you treat people who went through what anyone who survived the Holocaust did. The worst thing is that she gets what she wants: Rose out of the house and never gets a comeuppance like she and her gang of bitches deserves. Rose is happy to go though, because she's actually wanted by her best friend's lively family. It's a good book, but frustrating for sure.

The next book in chronological order is These Are My Words. I reviewed this when it was new and I'd finished reading it, so look for it here:
http://redblackandwhitebookreviews.blogspot.com/2016/10/dear-canada-residential-school.html

1968 is the final year covered by any of these series. In an unusual turn, the same author wrote two books: one for Dear America and one for My Name Is America. The DA chronicles the younger sister of the teenager in the MNIA. I always read the DA books first, so I began with Molly.

She's quite a smart girl, although maybe not so much with boys. Much of her diary revolves around news from her brother Patrick, who's in Vietnam, and her trying to figure out how she feels about the war and what she wants to do about it.

Patrick's book is almost solely about what happens in Vietnam, not much about things back home. The fault of a pair of books like this is that no matter which you read, you find out what happens to the characters and that makes the endings a little less interesting.

Patrick's book was mostly just sad though. Almost everyone dies.

And the final one, which I just finished up last night, is the last Dear Canada anthology. Unlike the three Christmas ones, this is completely new stories with completely new characters and even some of the authors never wrote for the series.

There are some really good entries here and things aren't what you expect. Very few of the stories take place before the 1900s. There were a couple rough ones though. One was unsatisfying because the poor girl was abused by her parents and it being a short story, there's no resolution. Another was so off the wall, I wouldn't even consider it historical and I don't think it had any place in this book. But it was a decent end to this reread that's taken me ages, and now all my Dear America books and spinoffs are nicely packed away in my storage closet, and I have a large stack of other historical fiction to make my way through!

First, we're tackling the American Sisters series, then the three books in Journey to America, and then the American Diaries series. After that, I will probably move on to the UK's version of Dear America, which is called My Story. I'm going to go check those right now, because I think I'm missing some of the newer ones.

WWII Part 4

The LAST section of World War 2 books. You have no idea how sick of these I am.

I skimmed most of these. I've read all but one before.

This first one isn't bad, but the horrible epilogue kinda ruins the entire book.

Not that it's written poorly, like a Barry Denenberg lazy epilogue, but it's horrible what happens. I don't really feel it was a necessary addition to the story.

Sniper Fire I read through, because I'd never read it before. It's not bad if you don't mind a book of almost non-stop battles and if you can get past the cover guy looking like some relative of James Franco.

Not the worst of the I Am Canada war books by far, mostly because it's different. It drops you right into the battles and you stay there. There's no "I grew up idolizing this dude and went to war with him and one of us met a chick and this other buddy died and blah blah blah." It's not the formulaic I Am Canada.

Off to My Name Is America. This one reads as very disjointed, which actually makes it more believable as an actual soldier's diary.

It's very short and it goes by really quickly. Like doesn't go in depth very much. I feel like you learn more about the cast of characters in the epilogue than you do in the main journal.

And this last IAC, I fully admit I cracked open the cover, groaned and set it on the finished pile. I'm too sick of WWII to do it. I don't remember hating this one though. It's got the Resistance and the guys end up in Buchenwald, so there's a lot of depth here.

But I'm so happy to be done with WWII that I don't even care that the next book is about baseball!

WWII Part 3

Torn Apart is a bit different than the Dear America internment camp book, but it's actually less graphic. The majority of the book doesn't even take place in the camp. It's odd, but I feel like the DA book with the white main character captured the problems Japanese Americans and Canadians faced better than the DC book with the Japanese Canadian main character. This was good, but it felt tamed down somewhat. It should be hard to read these stories, because this was one of the most embarrassing and terrible times in American/Canadian history, but that wasn't there so much with Mary's book. I do like Mary and the other characters, but I think the Dear America and My Name Is America books tackled the subject better.

Defend or Die is the last in the 1941-starting books. The main character is a Canadian soldier in one of the Japanese-run PoW camps in Hong Kong. The story flashes back and forth between the present day and him recalling what happened as he writes it into a blank book he found. This is definitely one of the best I Am Canada books. It's a not often discussed subject and it's written incredibly well. I'm not big into the war-focused boy books, but this one is well worth the read.

Unlike the other internment diaries, Ben's takes place mostly in the camp. He's got a very different attitude than Piper and Mary, choosing to focus on playing baseball (it got boring in parts because it was too much baseball) and ignoring school. Ben doesn't exactly get a fair deal though, because like a lot of the MNIA series, the book is short and Ben rushes through a lot of things and doesn't do in depth about much.

This is also another of Denenberg's epilogue failures. The character of Mike does a couple dumb things and then isn't mentioned again until the epilogue when he's shot and killed doing an attempted robbery. Nothing about Ben's father's damaged state of mind is ever explained. Only tiny details about a few characters are given, although it's still better than Early Sunday Morning's epilogue.

Ben's book is the first that begins in 1942, but I wanted to place it here with these two, because the topic shift is going entirely to battle. No more internment, just battle after battle for the next four books. Then I think we're finally done with the war!

WWII: Part 2

Three more from the WWII section of the Dear America and spinoff series.

Maddie Beck and her mother live with a group of people in a boarding house on Long Island, while Mr. Beck is away in his role as a naval officer.

Maddie reminds me a bit of an amped up version of Molly McIntire. She's very concerned about her dad and follows the news more closely than Molly does. And she strives to do something for the war effort, like Molly, but surpasses Molly's abilities by forming a group called Kids Fight for Freedom, alongside her best friend and soon-to-be-boyfriend Johnny. Actually, Maddie's like a combination of Molly and Kit. I feel like Kit really knew how to get shit done and Maddie's got that.

After her father's hurt, Maddie withdraws a lot, but then gets caught up in one of the most unrealistic plots in Dear America history. Not quite as sensational as some of the reboot books, but it's definitely up there! You'll have to read it to see what I mean.

It's a good addition to the DA series and I think it's one of the better ones about WWII.

Piper's story concerns how she and her family react to the internment of the Japanese in Seattle. Her father is a pastor for the Japanese Baptist church, while her older brother was at Pearl Harbor during the attack. For way too long, Piper is caught up in boy/girl drama while only occasionally thinking about what she should be doing and feeling about how she's seen her friends in the Japanese community treated. She eventually strays away from her white friends and asshole boyfriend and becomes friends with Betty Sato, a girl that attends her dad's church. She becomes more involved in what's going on, once the Japanese are rounded up and taken to their first relocation spot. When his congregation is moved to Minidoka in Idaho, Piper's dad decides to go along and take her with him. She has a fit at first, but gradually becomes happier with the people around her than she ever was back in Seattle, despite the hard circumstances and outside racist assholes.

I think this is one of the better reboot Dear Americas, although I did wonder a bit at why they chose a white girl to tell this story. Just like I wondered why a white girl had the Pearl Harbor book. There is a My Name Is America about a boy at one of the internment camps, so maaaaaaaybe that's why they chose to go this route, but meh. On the other hand though, I love anything that educates about this deplorable incident in American history.

Turned Away is sort of like My Secret War, only set in Canada. There are a few differences though.

First, the family is Jewish.

Second, Devorah has older brothers in the war, not her father.

Third, she doesn't spend nearly enough time on war things and sees way too many fucking movies! I swear, this chick is at the movies every other damn day. And she reads Agatha Christie constantly. Like I get that you're setting the time period, but dude, it's a historical fiction novel, not a pop culture 1940s book. And stop eating so much fucking popcorn. I don't even know how many times she bitched about a too-much-popcorn stomachache.

Fourth, the book constantly flip flops between being super serious and the movies/murder mysteries frivolity. It's a bit annoying. She has family trapped in France, including a cousin that writes to her as much as she can, and their story is utterly heartwrenching, yet on the next page, it's back to the damn movies. There are a lot of question sessions with her dad where she asks these ridiculous, impossible to answer big questions, too.

It was decent, I suppose, but mostly it just annoyed me. Part of that is because it was appalling to learn how few Jewish refugees Canada took in. They deliberately kept people out, because some antisemitic fuck was in charge. Nicely done, Canada. Not that the US has a perfect track record, but Canada is effin' huge and they could have taken in tens of thousands of people and they didn't. I believe the number mentioned in the historical note in the back of the book was 5,000. They took in 5,000 people. The US took in 200,000. Let that sink in and then try to read this without getting massively pissed. So much awful shit happened during WWII that having to read all these in a row is getting more and more difficult!

WWII: Part 1

I'm faced with a buttload of World War II books. I was going to try to read through a few more before my first write-up, but the last one I read annoyed me, so I'm just doing these four for now.

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.

Dear Canada's first WWII book is much more light-hearted. It's practically not about the war at all. The family takes in an English War Guest child and their neighbors get her brother, so there's some detail about the Blitz, but it's not like they're actually taking part in it. The older brother goes into the...navy, I think? It's been a bit since I finished this. So there's the worrying about a relative aspect, but a lot of this is just daily life stuff. It's not bad, just not that involved.

Gonna be honest and admit that I just skimmed this. Sometimes I'm in the mood for war stuff, and this time I wasn't. The boy war books just don't interest me. Argh. The Dear America ones tend to be better, but I Am Canada just seems really repetitive and, as I've mentioned before, formulaic. And there are four more of them in the series and every single one is WWII. I should force myself to read the others. I think two of them are ones I never even read, but I know I've read this one before.

And this one. This is the book that annoyed me so much that I had to get these reviews done.

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!

DEAR CANADA: Depression

Oh, man, this took forever to get through. Definitely one of the most boring ones.

This book isn't so much about the depression as it is the problems Jews faced in Depression-era Toronto. I feel like she's talking about the same thing over and over, and she talks so much about her cousin that it may as well be his diary.

It's just not interesting. I appreciate that the author used the experiences of his parents to write a book, but it was not enough to make a good story.

The Christmas short story for this is actually better than the book itself, because they lay off the talk about Hitler and riots and "stick with your own kind" for a change.

DEAR CANADA: Immigrant in Saskatchewan

I'm pretty sure this was one of the earliest DCs I read. Ivy is still one of my favorites from the series. She is a Character. Her book is pure slice of life and not exactly historical fiction, but she is so fun that rereading this is always a delight. I didn't learn a thing from it, but I loved all the characters so much that it didn't matter. There are no real tragedies in this, just random life in Saskatchewan for a family of English immigrants.

I give it a very high recommendation.

DEAR CANADA: Gold Mountain

Mei-ling's story is quite good. She's in Canada with her father, while her mother and younger brother wait in China. She works hard, both in school and out. She tries to help earn money to bring her family together again in Canada.

Mei-ling's world is small. Most of the scenes take place in just a handful of locations with maybe a dozen characters. But that doesn't mean the book isn't well-written. It very much is! It just doesn't have huge historical elements to it. It's a slice of life for a Chinese immigrant girl in Canada in the early 1900s.

While I didn't learn much from the book, it was still a great read, unlike some of the others that focus less on history.

DEAR AMERICA & DEAR CANADA: Spanish Flu

Lois Lowry wrote one of my favorite series, the Anastasia Krupnik books. While they're my favorite bits of her writing, Like the Willow Tree is definitely one of the best of the revamped Dear America series additions.

The catalyst of the story is the Spanish flu, which wipes out the main character's parents and infant sister near the beginning of the book. The main character and her older brother are taken in by their maternal uncle and his wife, although the wife is an utter bitch for no reason that's ever explained and the uncle finally gives in to her pressure and takes the children to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker community.

The Shaker way of life is interesting and watching Lydia adjust to it is an enjoyable read. There are elements I like, but definitely plenty I don't. Like Lydia, I think the no pets rule is silly, especially because dogs and cats are called "unclean." Now if they had that rule to avoid an animal showing favoritism to one Shaker or another, I could see it, as they're all big on equality there. But unclean? That's a load. I also didn't like that they took her grandmother's ring from her. She even offered to not wear it, just to keep it in a drawer to look at, but they wouldn't allow it, yet she was allowed to keep a box that her brother made. Why one thing and not the other? I don't like their dismissive attitude toward the children's families, as there's nothing wrong with honoring where one came from.

And of course, there's the completely illogical idea of a celibate community. How do you think you're going to continue to grow if you don't create your own new generations? Clearly they didn't think that one through, which is why there only two of them left. Really. Just two people. There were three, but one died earlier this year.

My nitpicks of their society aside, this is a great book. I always prize ones that teach me something and I learned a lot here.

Fiona's Dear Canada book is a little more involved in the flu itself, with it not just flashing by causing devastation like it did in the DA book. Hers also has a lot of family drama. The grandmother character is a grade A bitch. The father actually loved the mother's twin sister, but ended up married to the mother instead, because both he and the sister were being pigheaded idiots. The mother and aunt are one of three sets of twins. The main character and her sister are identical and their older sisters are fraternal. The mother isn't in the book, having died after the birth of the only brother, but the aunt stays on to help the father raise the family. Fiona slowly uncovers their family mystery and the father and aunt get married in the end, which finally drives the godawful grandmother out of the house. So all this is going on after a long lead up, which culminates in the younger set of twins being sent to two different places to escape the Spanish flu. However, Fiona uses her twintuition to realize that something's not right and ends up going home, where she sees her sister has the flu. With Fiona's help, Fanny makes it through, but not long after, one of the older twins catches it and dies. It's after her death that the drama really starts up.

It sounds complicated, but it makes sense as you read it. This is definitely one of the more dramatic DCs though, although not to the level of some of the rerelease DAs.

So with these two, we finally wrap up World War I. I think there were six that centered on the war and the stuff going on at the same time. I'm getting a little break from war with the next nine books, but then we jump into World War II, which has a whopping fourteen books set between 1941 and 1944. And after that, there are only a handful left! This is the last leg of the DA reread.

DEAR CANADA: Halifax Explosion

Man, a lot of crazy shit went on during WWI. Not only is there this huge war, but there's the drama of the suffrage movement, this giant explosion that destroyed a good chunk of Halifax, and a nasty flu epidemic that's coming up in a couple books.

Like most of these Dear Canada topics, I didn't know anything about the explosion until I read this. The diary starts out normally, but once that explosion hits, the writer's family is basically wiped out.

I think the author does a good job of showing different types of PTSD amongst the survivors, and the unraveling family mystery keeps the story from being mired in sadness.

This is definitely one of the better Dear Canadas, because it taught me about something I knew nothing about and did so using engaging characters.

Catching Up

I got quite behind in my reviews, so I'm going to put them all together.

Of this batch, the book I read first, Prisoners in the Promised Land, was by far the best.

Did you know Ukrainians and other immigrants from that area were forced into internment camps in Canada during World War I? Because before I read this, I had no idea.

Anya's story is a difficult journey, but it's the most moving and I think the most important of the books here.

Anastasia's Royal Diary brings that reread to a conclusion. I confess that I skimmed this. I've been reading these while sick and recovering from being sick, so I just wasn't in the mood for another story with a sad ending after the three Titanic books! I do remember enjoying this when I've read it in the past, but it's not one of my favorites from the series.

It did get one of the only Royal Diary rereleases and the cover is so crazy that it's worth taking up the space here.

I mean, seriously. The original cover looks like a young teenage girl of that time period. It looks like it was based on actual photographs, which I'm sure it was. Then there's this thing on the left. It's a pretty picture, but that is absolutely not Anastasia.

Dear Canada has the first entry of the three World War I books.

Eliza is an interesting character, as she's the middle child of seven. She has two older brothers, both in the war, and one older sister, plus twins (one male, one female) that are younger and finally, one youngest sister. Her father is a minister, so the family is moderately well off, but not excessively.

About halfway through the book, Eliza loses her eldest and favorite brother to the war. After that, she turns into the confidante of her other older brother, who's involved in some drama over in England. Both he and his best friend love the same woman. That turns into a rather soap opera-level mess.

The story is engaging, but it's not the best home front sort of story, although I do appreciate the different ways the men are shown being affected by the war.

A lot of the war-themed I Am Canada books are rather formulaic. The male character is in his mid-upper teens at the start, goes off for training, goes into whatever type of battle, grows up enduring horrific things. Sometimes a woman is involved. They come home men. This one is more of the same. I ended up skimming it, because I feel like I read it not that long ago, even though it came out back in 2013. Good, but not one of the best. Boys doing war stuff is not the most interesting topic for me.

You can always tell a Dear America from the tail end of the line. The books lack that fabric bookmark I love so much.

I couldn't remember a thing about this book when I picked it up. I doubt I've ever reread it before. Simone is a society girl from New York City who wants to be useful, so she eventually finds her way to being a hello girl over in France. Her time over there is interesting, because it's not something covered in any of the other books. Simone is also very unusual in that she's seventeen at the beginning of the diary. Most DA girls are much younger! But the story doesn't work unless she is that old, because they don't let kids do what she does, of course.

The book is quite short and a very quick read, but it's somehow more fulfilling than others that are much longer. Simone's family is a handful of good characters, she has a love story with some adventure, she has a tragedy that actually got me sniffling, because it's been years since I read this and I'd forgotten. It's a good book. Definitely more than what I was expecting when I picked it up.

Okay, now I'm caught up! And the next DA is...suffrage. *groan*

TITANIC TRIFECTA

I've been sick this whole week, but I finally finished all three Titanic books and it's time for my reviews.

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.

These books are all a bit formulaic. Each one takes the same tour of the ship, where you go see the pool, the exercise room, the fancy staircase, etc. Then you see all the famous people.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

DEAR CANADA: Landslide

All Fall Down follows Abby and her family as they travel from Montreal to the town of Frank in Alberta and start a new life there. The father of the family is killed in an accident and when all his debts are discovered, the mother decides to write to her brother for help. He's started a hotel in Frank with his wife and son, so they're glad of the help.

Abby's main job is taking care of her younger brother Davy, who has Down Syndrome. He's the second such character in the series of DA and its spinoffs, although Gideon from Down the Rabbit Hole was much older. Olivia and John, the eldest siblings, practically hate their younger brother, and it takes months for them to grow out of their father's bad influence. The father was really an asshole character, while the mother is nice.

Everyone pitches in at the hotel or finds other local jobs. Olivia has boyfriend drama. Abby makes a Native Canadian friend. John's kind of an ass.

Throughout the book, there's a big secret and John is the one that finally reveals it. Abby isn't related to them. She's a baby that was brought to the mother by her father. She was one of the few survivors of a cholera epidemic aboard a ship and the mother's father brought her the baby, knowing she needed someone to care for, as her husband was pulling her own children more under his influence and away from her. (Told you he was an asshole.) The father never likes Abby and makes his children not like her much either. Thankfully, their time together after his death fixes all those shitty things.

Right when Abby is dealing with this shocking news, the landslide happens, killing many people, though all the main characters survive. Abby talks to her mother about her history after they've recovered from the tragedy and finally learns what little her mother knows.

The book is well-written and the characters, while not all likeable immediately, all eventually end up well. The landslide comes at the very end, so mostly this is just the story of a girl and her family.

DEAR CANADA: Home Girl

I think this was the first Dear Canada I ever read, though I'm not positive.

I love this one. It's written by the daughter of the family with the Home Girl, not the Home Girl herself, who really wouldn't have much time to write in a diary.

Victoria is obviously a well-to-do girl, but she's still a likeable character. She's like Triffie from a few books ago, although not as wealthy. Victoria wants to be a writer and her diary reflects that well, because her writing is very engaging.

The entire cast of characters is well-rounded and interesting. Few go without a backstory or development.

The action and drama are fun, but also believable, unlike some of the other DA series books.

Definitely a high recommend for this one. The follow-up Christmas story is also a nice addition, because that is written by the Home Girl herself, not Victoria. Marianna is given a diary by Victoria and she does find a little time to write in it, although she mentions that she doesn't have much free time, still having her duties to perform.

DEAR CANADA: Great Fire of St. John's

This is the diary of a very well-off girl in St. John's, who loses almost everything in the devastating fire. Triffie is presented as spoiled sometimes, but she's a very likeable character despite. She doesn't lord her status or money over anyone. The way she writes about things is more matter of fact, as it's all she knows.

The family owns a store and the stone warehouse is saved from the fire, so they all move into it and start salvaging what they can of their business.

It sounds rather boring summed up, but Triffie's such a likeable character that you want to read about her ups and downs. I like this one a lot.

DEAR CANADA Mill Girl

This book's title makes you think it's going to be horrible and depressing, but it's not. The diary is mostly focused on the people Flora knows and what she experiences. I don't even know if 10% of it is written about the mill.

The main effect of the mill has nothing to do with child labor and instead has her uncle losing fingers in a mill accident. He's basically an ass after that until Flora and her aunt concoct a scheme, writing to the uncle's brother, who then writes him, pretending not to know of his injury and asking for help on his farm out in British Columbia. At the end of the book, they decide move.

That's not saying this isn't a good read. It is. It's just very often not about working in a mill at all, which should kind of be the point, I think. You get the sense that the mill is dangerous and kids shouldn't be working there, but at the same time, it's presented as a necessary evil, and Flora even pulls a trick to keep her job. Days of Toil and Tears are not what's presented by the majority of the story at all.

DEAR CANADA: North West Resistance

I have to admit that I just could not get into this one. I remember reading it when I got it and it being okay, but it's got several problems. The story is very slow-paced and extremely sad, but there's also the usual struggle I find with books written by Trottier. She provides a glossary, but that doesn't cover all the words used, and there's no pronunciation guide. It always bothers me when I have to read words over and over in the story and I have no idea how to say them. As this book involves multiple languages, this was very distracting to me, and the combination of all these problems made me just skim it, then set it aside.

DEAR CANADA: Railroad

Not much to say about this one. It's more slice of life than historical, but not in a particularly engaging fashion. The other DC by the same author that I've reread was the similar, what with not much happening, but different in that at least the story was engaging. 

Kate has a habit of capitalizing random things that she must think are Important, which I find Distracting. 

Her diary is filled with kid drama. Older brother's kind of a dick, especially when he reads her diary out loud at school. I despise that trope. Her best friend had to move away, so she hardly sees her and after the friend goes off to finishing school, she turns into a useless, ungrateful twat and is never called on it. The local friend that thinks of Kate as her best friend is a bit thin-skinned. Kate does slight her sometimes, but the girl acts like a hateful spoiled brat in return, so I don't even really like it when they finally made up at the end. 

The only things that really happen with the railroad are a bunch of people getting hurt or killed, and Kate's constant bad dreams about things happening to her father, who works for the railroad. 

The holiday story in A Season for Miracles actually was more enjoyable than the entire book. I liked the budding romance between Kate and Rusty, although after reading the epilogue in the main book, you know that never goes anywhere. On one hand, it's frustrating because they're cute. On the other, it's also nice to see a historical piece where the girl does not end up hitched to her first love. 

So anyway, decent book, not the best, a bit too much kiddie drama for me. On to...another railroad book. Is it the last one? Maybe.

DEAR CANADA: Confederation

While I liked this book, I think it's fair to say that it's not particularly historical. Rosie talks about the confederation issues and you learn some of what's going on, but I bet all that info condensed would only take up a couple pages.

Really, this book is the diary of a young maidservant who got forced to take her older sister's place, because the family was moving from Quebec City to Ottawa and the older sister wanted to stay in Quebec City and get married. She bumbles around a bit, because she has a tendency to be clumsy when her mind is on something more important than her work. The manservant of the family hates her for a reason that's never explained. She hangs around with the Irish boy who delivers water to the house and the French boy who does something else. I don't even remember what. She eventually meets a fellow maidservant and they hang out sometimes. The French boy brings her a kitty. The mistress of the house almost dies while she's pregnant, but recovers and the baby isn't affected by her illness. She has the baby and a nursemaid is brought in. There's a carriage accident and shortly following, Rosie is told about a missing expensive bracelet. The nasty manservant thinks she took it. She's hurt by all this and eventually, it gets to be so much that she plans to leave, but changes her mind. The Irish boy yells at her for this and they seem to come to a bit of a understanding about the future. The family tells her they would never think it was her and yes, she's moving with them to the new house they're building. In the epilogue, we learn that the bracelet was found in the carriage by the manservant, so he's forced to apologize, but in the follow-up Christmas story, he's still an asshole. I enjoyed the Christmas story, because Rosie finally got made the nursemaid.

It's a good book. It's just not quite up to Dear America/Canada standards for the historical content.

DEAR CANADA: Underground Railroad

This book was a little break from the Civil War, despite still being set during it. The war gets very little mention though and its biggest connection to Julia May is that her older brother leaves Canada to fight.

The story follows Julia May and her parents, older brother and younger brother, as they travel to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Once there, they stop in Toronto for awhile, then move on further north.

If you're looking for major historical events, this isn't the right book in the series for you. It's very much a slice of life book with very few historical incidents. Julia May and her family finally are free, but they quickly learn that it's still hard to be anything but white even when you're not in the southern US and there are several incidents with no comeuppance for people that treat them unkindly.