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!

DEAR AMERICA & MY NAME IS AMERICA: Dust Bowl

Well, we're still in the Depression, but some areas of the country have upped the ante and their residents are suffering from humongous dust storms.

We have both Dear America and My Name Is America tales from this time period, but they face the problem in different ways.

The Dear America book tells of a family who won't leave the Texas panhandle, despite numerous setbacks, while the MNIA story is about a family that leaves Oklahoma for California.

The different experiences overlap, of course. The girl in the Dear America has a friend who tells her about the California experience, and the boy from MNIA has a friend and an aunt who remain in Oklahoma.

I preferred the characters and stories from the Dear America book, although I did like the traveling bit in MNIA. Naturally, the characters in the MNIA deal with more abuse. Californians were embarrassingly unwelcome to these poor people that needed help. Too bad they couldn't have been shipped off to live in dust for a month and see how they liked it. But history always has been and always will be full of assholes!

Next up, we're up in Canada for a girl who has polio and then we begin the loooooonnnng stretch of World War II.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Finnish Immigrant

This one's just kind of there. We've got the mining experience, but not in heavy detail. We've got the immigrant experience from the Finnish point of view, which is nice, but it's not that different from others. Labor unions blah blah blah. The characters are just kind of there, just like this book is just kind of there. It's not horrible, but it's not excellent. It's merely run of the mill Dear America series.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: NYC Newsie

Written by the same author as the overly sensationalized Down the Rabbit Hole and the squick-inducing Coal Miner's Bride, this book gets a lot of points from me for reading much more like a typical DA book and not something for adults.

Finn's a strong character and he paints a good picture of New York City in 1899 and what it was like for poorer families.

The book is a very quick read, but it's enjoyable from cover to cover.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Whaling Ship

This one is quite interesting, because I know nothing of whaling, so while I'm not that into sailing stories, at least there are some aspects that do interest me.

The characters are all decent, if a bit frustrating with the constant fighting.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Black Cowboy

A good entry into the series, but not one of the most interesting. There's only so much you can tell about cowboys. I think it's one of those things that needs to be seen rather than read about to fully grasp it.

It's also tough to write about a town like Abilene, Kansas when you're writing for a kids' series. 

It is nice to see a black character treated almost the same as the white and Mexican cowboys right off the bat. Almost. But that shortly after the Civil War, it's a lot more than you'd expect.

Not gonna lie though, I did tear up when he had to put his horse out of its misery. Animal death always gets me, so consider yourself warned about that.

Walter Dean Myers was a celebrated and prolific author and contributed three books to the My Name Is America series, of which this one is the first. 

MY NAME IS AMERICA/DEAR AMERICA: Railroad Race

The transcontinental railroad is the subject of both My Name Is America and Dear America books. Both tell similar stories about the race between the Union Pacific and Central Pacific in their battle during the construction of the railroad.

I felt the My Name Is America book was stronger, because this is a tale better told by a male character. The Dear America was all right, but quickly turned into a love story and was more about family issues than anything involving the railroad. There have been great DA books with stories told from the female perspective, but in this case, when the subject is building a railroad, it works better as the journal of a boy that's doing all these various jobs, not someone who's just travelling along while her father writes a newspaper about everything.

So if you just want one book on the subject, read the My Name Is America one. The Dear America isn't bad, but it's not the better story for this subject.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Civil War

The next two in the run of Civil War books come from the My Name Is America series.

Rufus Rowe is too weak to join the fighting, but he's on the southern side. Like the cover says, he's a witness to the battle of Fredericksburg.

I didn't find this one interesting and I was glad it was a quick read. The main friend Rufus makes in the book is a black slave, yet he doesn't seem to ever change his position on the war. His thoughts on slavery are barely covered, so I felt that a rather weak point, considering that's, you know, the main point of the war.

The author, Sid Hite, did not contribute any others to the series.

James Edmond Pease, on the other hand, writes an excellent camp record with illustrations and everything. His rise in rank (more than once) is an interesting story contrasted with his own fear and his struggles with self-doubt. He's a much more well-rounded character than some of the underdeveloped journal writers found in this series.

There are a couple uses of the N word if you're not comfortable with that. I don't like it, but of course, these are historical novels, so it's to be expected.

Jim Murphy contributed 2 Dear Americas and 3 My Name Is Americas to the series.

Up next is a Dear Canada about the Underground Railroad, so we've got a bit of a break from the fighting.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Chinese Miner

I have read Laurence Yep's work so often in American Girl that I always think he wrote more Dear America series books than he did. This one and Lady of Ch'iao Kuo for Royal Diaries are his only two.

I quite enjoyed this book, because it's a very interesting viewpoint. The mining details I'm not interested in ever, but Runt's life in the camp is more interesting than life in the white mining spaces. I really like his voice, too. He's a likeable character.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Donner Party

I have to be honest. I just was not in the mood for another Oregon Trail book, especially one that ends in cannibalism. The diary writer didn't partake, but it still happened, of course.

I got about 1/3 through before I skimmed the end, then popped it onto my finished pile. It's decently written and the author's only contribution to the DA series, but I just did the happy ending, less drama version of this book yesterday. I know the Dear America version is coming up, too, but at least that's a female voice.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Oregon Trail

Welp, it's Oregon Trail time. I feel like I've read a lot of historical fiction about these journeys and they're all very similar, just with varying degrees of tragedy. Jedediah's is moderate in that regard, with the biggest tragedy taking place before the book even starts. He's the only survivor of a river-crossing gone wrong. He loses both parents and his younger sister.

Jed's an engaging character and the story was enjoyable. The cast of characters is quite good. This is the author's only contribution to any of the DA series, which is unfortunate. I would have liked to have seen more from her.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Trail of Tears

Joseph Bruchac is an Abenaki author, whose decades-long research into Native American cultures shows through in his writing. I would not be surprised if this was the best researched book of the entire Dear America series with all its spinoffs.

The book is a great insight into Cherokee culture at the time, although like any book about the whites' treatment of Native Americans, it was hard for me to read, because what happened was horrific. Read it though. It's painful but read it.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Lewis & Clark Expedition

Frequent DA contributor Kathryn Lasky did this one My Name Is America title and it's quite good. It was great to get a break from war war war with a book on exploration and discovery.

Augustus is a believable character and Lasky provided a fun voice for him. I enjoyed it, so not really much to say otherwise! It's interesting. Read it.

Unfortunately, it's right back into war after this. I've already started the Dear Canada about the War of 1812, which will be followed by the I Am Canada on the same topic, so I'll put them together in one entry. But after those, we get a pretty long break from war. Yay.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: Revolutionary War Patriot

Barry Denenberg has written many books for the Dear America series. He's done five for Dear America and was one of only two male writers for the female-led series. He only did two for MNIA, this one and Ben Uchida's. He also wrote one Royal Diary for Elisabeth.

This is an enjoyable book in an unusual format. Instead of the typical day by day journal entries, the book is divided into section with different topic headings. I think it works because it seems to fit the narrator's character well.

There are interesting characters here and some action-packed Patriot moments, but there's not a lot of meat to the story. It felt really short and a lot of the characters just appear out of nowhere with no real background. I do like it, but I think if it had been longer, it would have been much better.

MY NAME IS AMERICA: JASPER JONATHAN PIERCE

Here we are on our first My Name Is America. I tend to get slightly bored by the "boy" books in these series, because so many of them are war stories. Jasper's isn't though, being about the Pilgrims set at the same time as Mem's book, so it's really enjoyable.

Ann Rinaldi is the author on this one and one of only five female authors to tackle a MNIA book. She is a prolific historical fiction author, but only contributed this book and Dear America's most controversial book, My Heart Is on the Ground, to these series. I have read a good portion of her body of work and...it's spotty at best. She writes horrible, depressing things a lot of the time and when I get to My Heart Is on the Ground, I'm not even going to reread it or review it. I'm going to link to a review that anyone who's read the book needs to read. I used to enjoy that book until I read this review and realized just how many wrong things are in it. But I digress.

Jasper's journal is actually mostly positive, which is a far cry from the usual Rinaldi fare. It's interesting to read after Mem's because there is an overlap in characters and different events are handled different ways and from very different perspectives. I recommend reading the pair together. I favor Mem's voice a bit more, but Jasper is a good character, too.