AGHM #8-10

Under Copp's Hill is one of my favorites in this series, so it's nice that it follows Suzette's book, which is another favorite. Innie is almost as awesome as Suzette.

Innocenza is an orphan girl living in Boston's North End in 1908 with her controlling grandmother, her aunt and uncle, and various cousins. Her best friend is her cousin Teresa, whose older sister Carmela tells the girls about a new settlement house for immigrant children where they learn dancing, singing and some household tasks, as well as being able to borrow books from the library. Part of the settlement house is a pottery where Carmela works as a painter.

The troubles at the settlement house start shortly after the weekly library clubs begin meeting and while investigating, Innie brings negative attention to herself. Despite the blame, she is determined to solve the mystery with help from her new Russian Jewish friend Matela and a usually reluctant Teresa.

The mystery is a decent one in which you discover the means well before the perpetrator. Innie's personal struggles with thinking she's been promised to the Catholic nuns against her wishes are another part of the story, as well as Carmela's struggle to earn citizenship. The Italian male sexism in the story is not welcome, but sadly historically accurate. Pretty sad when the women in the household are the only actual citizens yet you don't respect their ability to read and write when your own sucks! Ugh, men.

But yeah, great book, great characters. Innie and Matela are both awesome.

And so we follow two good ones with this dud. Southern family at the end of the Civil War. Dad's still off fighting. Just received word older brother died. The mystery is the deserter in the woods and the thief around the farm. Same person? Maybe, maybe not. Oh, wait, there's a young Yankee soldier, too.

It's not a horrible book and the mystery is decent, but what bothers me is all the anti-Yankee talk without one word about how the South sucked for supporting slavery. Usually in these Southern point of view books, the lead character isn't a complete dick about slavery, but there's nary a mention of it here. That's this book's largest flaw.

You can expect something decent from the author of Julie's books and one Dear America, although others might know her better as the Just Moody author. I've never read any of those.

Glasshouse is, I think, the oldest book in the series, being set in 1621 Jamestown.

Merry is forced into indentured servitude. Like she's actually kidnapped and forced into it. She got shanghaied, but for indentured servitude in the New World, not being on a ship's crew.

Her only friend is an Italian glassblower that's a little older than her, so she gets lucky when the people to pick her for indenture are the ones that own the glasshouse.

However, she's stuck living with the complete asshole that runs the place (not owns it) and his even more assholish, abusive wife. She enjoys her time in the glasshouse though, except then things start to go bad. A batch of glass is destroyed when the fires are let to burn out in the kilns, which take weeks to heat up enough to work again. Once that's fixed, someone breaks the entire batch of finished glass, and then the owner of the glasshouse is suspiciously dead. No answers ever come in that, but I suspect the asshole wife poisoned him. Merry's pal Angelo is framed, but she takes the blame and sits in prison instead, then escapes. Shortly after, she catches the asshole wife in the act and everything comes to light. She's awarded her freedom, then learns her older sister arrived as a tobacco bride, so everything works out for her in the end.

Merry's a good character, not too weak, not overly strong as would seem anachronistic in such an early setting. The mystery was good, too, and the story moved along at a good pace.

AGHM #4-7

Voices at Whisper Bend takes place during 1942, so we've got a lot of the same elements we see in Molly's books. Helping on the homefront and such.

Charlotte's father operates a tugboat, so he's still at home, though her older brother is off fighting.

Charlotte gets the idea for a scrap metal drive, but when the scrap all disappears, she's got a lot of leads to follow and finds some unlikely allies along the way.

The story is pretty well-written, although Charlotte's PTSD from an incident in the river when she was young is hard to read. It's frustrating when you're reading all their suffering and it would be better if she'd just friggin' TELL someone, but she doesn't. It comes to a head when she's forced...literally forced...to help her father on the tugboat.

There's a lot going on in this one and kind of a lot of characters, but it flows pretty well. The author also did AGHM #8, which I'm reading right now.

It's the suffrage book. Yaaaaaay.

This one takes place in 1914 New York City when an Irish family of a widowed mother, the heroine and her two younger sisters take in an English boarder who turns out to be a pretty major figure in the suffrage movement.

Not that she tells anyone that. The mother ends up tossed in jail, but it's not obvious to the heroine, although it is painfully obvious and frustrating to the reader. I hate books where adults deliberately hide things from kids and this is one of those.

It's not a horrible suffrage book, but the entire mystery wouldn't exist if adults would just treat children like real people.

We've got the same problem in this one. Bessie's mother has TB, which is apparently some big horrible deal back in 1928, so her father takes her and her younger brother and runs away to Harlem.

Without telling the kids a damn thing.

I mean, come the fuck on. Tell them the mother's sick but don't tell them what it is if TB is such a freak out-worthy thing.

So of course Bessie thinks her dad's abandoned her mom and he's all stupidly secretive about what he's doing in Harlem for work and Bessie goes running all over trying to solve the mystery.

The cover highlights one of the worst bits. No one is going to think a 12-year-old kid is an adult. Also, no 12-year-old kid is going to immediately be able to walk in heels like Bessie apparently can.

It's not a horrible book. The setting and time period are excellent. I wish AG would do a Harlem Renaissance girl and this book just fueled that want even more. But another hiding things from kids turns into a mystery book and even worse this time is annoying and takes away from what's good about the story.

Ah, this one. I love this one. Kathleen Ernst steps up to the plate here. She wrote 3 books in this series, plus several historical character mysteries and the Caroline series.

Suzette is an awesome character. She's half-Ojibwe and half-French, so she's caught in between two worlds, but as she says in the end, she wouldn't have been able to solve the mystery without skills from each part of her.

This is set in 1732, so it's one of the earliest of the series.

Excellent characters here, excellent mystery. Suzette is actually almost treated like an adult and she's got a lot of freedom to do as she pleases, so she can get things done.

AGHM #2 and #3

Hoofbeats of Danger I quite liked. It takes place in Nebraska Territory in 1860 at a Pony Express station. Annie, another plucky 11-year-old, has a favorite express horse and when she begins acting crazily, it's up to Annie to solve the mystery with the help of her half-Shoshone healer friend and Bill Cody himself in his younger years.

This one's got a lot of action and the mystery keeps plugging along at a good pace.

The only thing that took me out of the story a bit is that the horse is named Magpie, which is of course Kaya's hated nickname. There was a blonde Caroline in Smuggler's Treasure set during Historical Caroline's War of 1812 so that was a bit distracting, too.

Unfortunately, this was author Holly Hughes' only contribution to the series.

Set during WWII in ruralish North Carolina, the Night Flyers is about 12-year-old Pam, who lives with her mother on a small farm while her father is off being a soldier. Pam struggles in school and with the abuse of her mother's boss's bratty son. Who never gets his. Not really. The douche. A strange man with a maybe-German accent comes asking about her precious pigeons, which are prize winners she's raised with her father. He wants them because they're night flyers and will pay her hundreds for even one breeding pair. But when the pigeons start to go missing and Pam's incredibly stupid ass mother tries to make her abandon the half-wolf dog she's trained, Pam gets into a much bigger adventure than she planned, although the culprit ends up being much closer to home.

At least she gets to keep her well-trained guard dog! He was the best part of this book.

This one was by Elizabeth McDavid Jones, who wrote 3 Felicity mysteries, 1 for Kit, and 4 others in this series.

AMERICAN GIRL HISTORY MYSTERIES: #1 Smuggler's Treasure

I started my reread of the American Girl History Mysteries. These shall henceforth be known as AGHM because I'm too lazy to type all that every time.

The AGHM series consisted of 22 books written by various authors, each one taking place in a different place and time period. These were released from 1999-2004 and I believe predated the AG mysteries featuring the established historical characters. As in many of those mysteries, the AGHM girls are age 11. (Or at least the first two have been. I'm a chapter into the second book right now.)

The first book was written by the author of the Marie-Grace/Cecile series and several of the historical character mysteries.

It's 1814 in New Orleans. (This author must know New Orleans.) So it's during the War of 1812 and Elisabet's father, a wealthy ship captain, is kidnapped by the British. Elisabet is sent via ship from Boston to New Orleans to live with her aunt and uncle. However, upon her arrival, she finds out her uncle died shortly after he sent for her, her aunt is in Baton Rouge helping her daughter from her first marriage, and she has to work in the family bakery. As a higher class girl, she's pretty horrified. Elisabet starts out a bit snooty, but quickly gets that worked out of her, although she never loses her passion for helping her father. All of the characters are decent and the mystery was part ghost story, part hunt for a treasure map, and part pirates. A good start to the series.

MY STORY: Wrapping Up the 1800s

Zulu War is a really interesting addition to this series. Another of the better war books, like Indian Mutiny.

Jabulani's a great character and the entire book is loaded with other good characters.

It's one of those that I enjoyed, but don't have much to say about.

I feel like I could buy myself a nice meal if I had a dollar for every time I read the words "phossy jaw" between this book, Sweep's Boy and Victorian Workhouse.

This one's another during that same time period, only from the perspective of a poorer girl, not a poor boy or rich girl.

She works in a match factory, although not with the phosphorus, and gets caught up in the strike. The biggest difference between this and a lot of the other books is that she's a bit older and has romantic dalliances with her somewhat dreary boyfriend and a dashing reporter.

I enjoyed this book, because Flora's an awesome character and her grandmother is even more awesome. Her older sister's a stupid bitch though. I don't care for that uppity girl.

Flora is interested in creating "moving pictures," which she's fascinated by and she agrees with her grandmother's progressive viewpoints on suffrage and the treatment of "colonial peoples." A lot of the other characters are disturbingly racist, even though it's appropriate for them to be written that way for time.

It's a good book because it doesn't delve too much into suffrage, unlike the next one.

I think this is one of my most disliked historical books. It continues Flora's story, sort of. At the beginning, her grandmother has just died and it's come to light that she took in a ward. The young girl is the daughter of a woman that made a brief but memorable appearance in Flora's book.

While I like the character of Flora a lot, I couldn't bring myself to get much farther than a few diary entries in this. This represents the violent side of the suffrage movement and frankly, that just bores me. I don't care about vandalism or force-feeding or abuse on the picket lines. I remember it took me a long time to suffer through it on my first read and I wasn't going to do it again.

I included this one in my final 1800s write up, because the entire rest of the series is WWI and WWII. I need to get a couple more books for the WWII section, but I opted to just take another break from this line and switch to the American Girl History Mysteries for awhile. War books. *groan*

MY STORY: 1800s Part 2

I took a break from my My Story reread awhile back and did American Diaries in its place. Now with those books finished, it's time to return to the UK's answer to Dear America.

I started Crystal Palace before the break, got a few entries in and was done. I reread the early entries, then made myself finish the book this time. I don't care for this one, because it's not very historical. There are some details about the building of the Crystal Palace in there, but most of it is drama amongst one household of a wealthy family and their staff. I could only take so much of the son being a complete douche.

Crimea is interesting as the war books go, because it goes into the training for a drummer/bugler and it doesn't actually spend too much time on the details of fighting. Everything is seen more at a distance and a good chunk is devoted to just how shitty conditions were for these poor guys. I liked the bit about the Charge of the Light Brigade. I mean, the poem's better, of course, but it was nice to see the historical context behind it in more detail.

I think this is one of the best boys' books. It's so nice to get out of Europe for a change! Lots of action in this one, lots of spying and lots of politics. It's a really interesting read and I recommend it. The Rani of Jhansi was badass and amazing.

I feel like Sweep's Boy is a deceptive title, because he works as a chimney sweep for like three chapters. Then he's a thief. Then he escapes from prison. Then he's with a band of kids living on their own on a rooftop. Then he's a Barnardo boy. It's a good exciting story, but another title would have been better for the story.

The diary of an upper class girl going with her mother to the local workhouse, because her mom's on the Board of Guardians. Edith's a bit naive and spoiled, but she's still very likeable. The other characters are good, too. I like Rosie a lot. Well-written and a nice change of pace from the very fast-paced, action-packed previous two.

AMERICAN DIARIES Part 5

If you like standing in line, this is the book for you! Possibly the least exciting book in the entire series. Nell's mom's kind of a judgy asshole, so that's not fun. Her grandmother's become forgetful and sees her dead husband everywhere, making Nell worry that she'll be sent back to Ireland and Nell will have to go with her. Her little sister is beyond old enough to stand, but gets toted around everywhere. There's a bit of interesting stuff at the beginning, but then they stand in line to get off the ship, they stand in line in the freezing cold waiting for the ferry, they stand on the ferry waiting to get off at Ellis Island, then they stand around Ellis Island for all the inspections. It's boring. It's also sad because they introduced a nice man only to have him fucking freeze to death. Nice going, Duey. Apparently, that was the only way she felt she could liven up her story of Standing in Fucking Lines Forever. 

Thankfully, Francesca's got a much better story. She's from a wealthy DC family. The mom does a lot of charity work. And this is the only book where the subject is suffrage that I've ever actually quite liked. The characters are interesting and the story moves along at a good pace. Not much standing around in this one! 

Janey's another white girl's point of view of Pearl Harbor, so ho hum there, but she's accompanied for most of the book by Akiko, who lives across the street from her and is a Japanese girl her age. As for Pearl Harbor stories though, this feels too short. I wanted more details, but that's the problem of trying to make these books last only the span of one day.

Zellie finishes off the series. She's a free black girl whose grandmother just died, leaving her on her own at age twelve. She walks to another town and finds work in a boardinghouse for mill girls, but the woman running it wants her to spy on them. There's some pretty good intrigue in this one and Zellie's a very likeable character. I could have read a longer book about her. 

So that finishes off American Diaries. I'm going to switch back to My Story, though I'm not sure just when yet. I might work on something else first.