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Roll by Darcy Miller

Aug22

A boy named Lauren, commonly called Ren for obvious reasons, and Sutton, the girl with red, yellow, and orange striped hair who is Ren’s new neighbor, bond and grow a friendship over a common interest in Birmingham Roller pigeons.

I’m always interested in looking into new worlds and communities that I never knew about or heard of before. Training pigeons and pigeon competitions are certainly a thing that never came to my notice in the many years I’ve been around. How did such a wild and entertaining group of birds escape my attention for so long?

Watch this.

Yes, there are pigeons that turn flips in the air. To some extent, they are trained to fly together and to return to the coop, but they turn flips in the air because they just do. They were bred to do pigeon acrobatics?

“Some fanciers fly their rollers in competition, both locally and nationally. There is even a World Cup competition that includes several other countries. Kits (group of pigeons) are scored for quality and depth, as well as the number of birds that roll at the same time, referred to as a turn or break. The Birmingham Roller is a very popular breed of performing pigeon, with around 10,000 breeders worldwide.”

The book was a decent middle grade read with some good insights about friendship and growing up and making new friends but keeping the old, but I really appreciated the introduction to the Birmingham rollers and to a community of “pigeon fanciers” that I knew nothing about. It’s a crazy and wonderful world that we live in, and as RL Stevenson said, “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”

Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight

Aug9

I finally read this justly famous and best-selling dog story, and the first surprise was the title. It’s not “Lassie, come home!”, a plea or a command for Lassie to return to home and hearth, as I always thought it was. Instead, “Lassie Come-Home” is a nickname for the faithful collie who does return home, through many miles and obstacles, from the highlands of Scotland all the way back to the Yorkshire country family in the south of England who were her original masters. Lassie is a “come-home dog” in the Yorkshire vernacular.

Perhaps Lassie Come-Home is the template for many books that came after: The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford, A Dog’s Way Home by Bobbie Pyron, and other stories of faithful dogs and other animals finding their way home after a series of adventures and difficulties. Or maybe the plot mirrors Black Beauty and other earlier books that show faithful animals making their way back home to the owners they love. Lassie’s journey home is certainly an adventurous one.

The author note in the back of my book says:

“Lassie first appeared in a short story published by the Saturday Evening Post in 1938. The story was so popular that Mr. Knight expanded it into a full-length book, which was published in 1940 and instantly became a best-seller. In 1942 the MGM movie based on the book launched the career of Elizabeth Taylor.”

All those survivors of economic depression and war-weary readers and movie-goers most likely needed a hopeful story about overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds, the kind of victory through suffering that is depicted in Lassie Come-Home. The story itself is pretty incredible: a dog somehow finds his way home form Scotland to Yorkshire, 400 miles as the crow flies or over 1000 miles with the obstacles such as lakes and rivers that Lassie has to skirt around or find a way over.

Eric Knight was born in England (in the Yorkshire country that her writes about), came to the United States as a teenager, and died in an airplane crash while serving in the U.S. Army during World War II—but not before giving us this classic dog story. It’s well-written, hopeful, and —-spoiler here—the dog doesn’t die!

Flaming Arrows by William O. Steele

Aug7

Another book that is well-written and sure to appeal to adventure-loving kids, with good themes of reserving judgment and not visiting the sins of the fathers on their children, BUT it’s full of guns and violence and “savages” who are all bad and practically discounted as not human.

If you can get past the fact that this book presents a very one-sided view of the wars between the settlers in Kentucky and the Native Americans who were being displaced from their lands, it’s a good book. Mr. Steele doesn’t set out to tell a story about the Native American view of these events, and indeed, he doesn’t tell us anything about the Chickamauga “Injuns” in this story, except that they come every year to kill and burn and destroy.

The story is about Chad, an eleven year old boy who is forced to take refuge along with his family in the fort when the Injuns come on their yearly foray. Chad’s family and the other families in the fort are joined by the Logans, a woman and her children whose father, Traitor Logan, is in league with the Chickamauga. When the others in the fort want to throw the Logans out because of their father’s traitorous ways, Chad’s father and the scout, Amos Thompson, stand up for the Logans, saying, “I reckon they’re harmless. They’ve left Traitor to home. Or maybe he’s left them.”

The rest of the book is about Chad’s growth, both in courage and in understanding and empathy. He becomes more mature as the settlers suffer together and fight off the Indians, and this maturity is accomplished both by Chad’s courage and steadfastness in fighting and guarding the walls of the fort and by his growing understanding of what it must be like to be Josiah Logan, the Logan boy whose father has not provided for the family.

If you want a book in which the protagonist grows to learn that violence is not the way to deal with problems, that story is not in this book. If you want a book that presents the realities of frontier life as the the frontiersmen experienced and thought about them, Flaming Arrows does a good job. The settlers on the Cumberland frontier just didn’t have time or inclination to spare much thought for the Indians who were attacking their homes and their fort: they were too busy trying to stay alive and protect their families. Illustrated by the famous and talented illustrator, Paul Galdone, Flaming Arrows shows that reality in the text and in the pictures. I will keep this book in my library because I believe it speaks the truth about one perspective on the lives our early American forbears. And it’s a good story, taken on its own terms. It shouldn’t be the final word on this subject, but it is a valuable look at how people of the time period thought and lived and grew.

We Were There at the Opening of the Atomic Era by James Munves

Jul16

I don’t know Mr. Munves, but the historical consultant for this book in the historical fiction series We Were There is also a character in the book, Dr. John R. Dunning. Dr. Dunning really was there. In fact, in his introduction to the story, Dr. Dunning explains:

“When Mr. Munves asked me to serve as his historical consultant in the writing of this book, I agreed at once because to me there is nothing more important than recapturing for our you men and women the wonderful creative excitement those days in which the atomic age began. When I went over Mr. Munves’ manuscript with him and discovered that I was a character in his story, I asked him if he would let me write a preface so as to make it clear to you that this Dr. Dunning is a real person. Most of the characters in the story, except for the young hero and his father, are real people.”

This book was published by Grossett and Dunlap in 1960, and it begins in 1942 with fifteen year old school boy, Tony Brenner, whose father works with Enrico Fermi, Professor John Dunning, and other scientists at Pupin Laboratories in New York City. When Tony makes a presentation to his high school science club about the possibilities of nuclear fission, his father is both proud and alarmed. “If a Nazi spy heard about your speech, he might think I was doing research in atomic energy,” says Papa Brenner, who is German immigrant and a physicist. Of course, that’s exactly what Dunning, Fermi, the fictional Brenner are doing, but the project is Top Secret. SO Tony gets taken into the top secret Manhattan Project so that he will learn what he needs to keep secret and why.

Tony’s family moves first to Chicago and then to New Mexico, all in pursuit of an atomic weapon that will defeat the Germans (and the Japanese) and win the war. The story presents most of the common arguments both for and against the bomb, and it gives a lot of scientific and technical information about the bomb and how it was developed. The ending sentences will give you a feel for the moral consensus of the book’s authors and consultants:

“It is not a nice thing to think about—that you helped make something that killed or hurt at least 230,000 people. But it doesn’t really matter whether this was done by bullet, sword, fire or atomic energy.
What does matter is that people wish to kill or hurt other people. . . .
The atom promises unlimited power. It also threatens the destruction of civilization. It is up to all of us to decide how it will be used.
The atom is neither good nor evil. Only people are.”

If you are interested in the events and people surrounding the Manhattan Project and the making, testing, and use of the atomic bomb, I would suggest you find a copy of this novel for a 1960-ish perspective on the project, its genesis and aftermath. For other children’s and young adult books on the subject, take a look at:

Fiction:
The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages.
The Secret Project Notebook by Carolyn Reeder.
The Bomb by Theodore Taylor. Nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll.
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr.

Nonfiction:
Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin.
Sabotage: The Mission to Destroy Hitler’s Atomic Bomb by Neal Bascomb.

On July 16, 1945 at 5:29:45 a.m., the scientists of the Manhattan Project successfully tested the first atomic bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Less than a month later, in August, the bomb was used to force the Japanese to surrender to Allied forces and end World War II.

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If you like Ramona Quimby by Beverly Cleary . . .

Jul12

For the month of July, I’m planning a series of posts about readalikes: what to read (or what to suggest to your favorite child reader) when you’ve read all of your favorite author’s books or all of the books of a certain genre that you know of, and you don’t know what to read next.

Ramona Quimby wannabes are easy to find, but some are better than others. These are some that I have in my library, and I can recommend:

The Bantry Bay series by Hilda van Stockum. These are about an Irish family, but they have the same kind of family adventures and endearing mishaps as an American family like the Quimbys. Pegeen is especially fun, telling about an orphan girl who comes to live with the O’Sullivan family. Pegeen is a spirited young lady who manages to get herself into all sorts of trouble just by being herself… kind of like Ramona.
The Cottage at Bantry Bay.
Francie on the Run.
Pegeen.

Clementine by Sara Pennypacker. I really like Clementine. Like Ramona, she’s lovable, but prone to misunderstandings and trouble. Books, so far, in this series are:
Clementine.
The Talented Clementine.
Clementine’s Letter.
Clementine, Friend of the Week.
Clementine and the Family Meeting.
Clementine and the Spring Trip.
Completely Clementine.

Clarice Bean books by Lauren Child. Clarice Bean is a bad speller, a good friend, and a fan of the fictional detective, Ruby Redfort. Clarice’s adventures at school and at home make for funny and entertaining reading. The three Clarice Bean books that I am familiar with are:
Utterly me, Clarice Bean.
Clarice Bean Spells Trouble.
Clarice Bean, Don’t Look Now.
There seem to be more books in the series, and Lauren Child has written a spin-off series of Ruby Redfort detective novels.

Betsy books by Carolyn Haywood. Ms. Haywood wrote forty-seven books for children; twelve of them are the “Betsy books”, about a little girl growing up in a 1950’s neighborhood in a typical U.S. city. Ms. Haywood herself grew up and lived as an adult in Philadelphia, and she said that the children in her books were modeled on the children in her own Philadelphia neighborhood. Like the Ramona books, Betsy books feature children in school and at home engaging in everyday family activities with a lot of humor and affection. The titles are:
B Is for Betsy
Betsy and Billy
Back to School With Betsy
Betsy and the Boys
Betsy’s Busy Summer
Betsy’s Little Star
Betsy and the Circus
Betsy and Mr. Kilpatrick
Betsy’s Play School
Betsy’s Winterhouse
Merry Christmas from Betsy
Snowbound with Betsy

Some standalone books that might appeal to Ramona fans are:
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo.
Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning by Danette Haworth.
Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer Holm.
A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban.

If you like Narnia . . .

Jul10

For the month of July, I’m planning a series of posts about readalikes: what to read (or what to suggest to your favorite child reader) when you’ve read all of your favorite author’s books or all of the books of a certain genre that you know of, and you don’t know what to read next.

Readalikes for Narnia? Well, there’s nothing exactly like Narnia, but the following books might just scratch your Narnian itch:

The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie both by George Macdonald. George Macdonald was C.S. Lewis’s inspiration in many ways, including in the Chronicles of Narnia.

100 Cupboards by N.D. Wilson. The story of Henry who finds 99 cupboards behind the plaster in his attic bedroom in his Uncle Frank’s and Aunt Dottie’s house in Kansas. Each cupboard has its own secrets to reveal, but the most exciting, magical cupboard is behind the locked door of of an ancient bedroom belonging to Henry’s grandfather. Sequels are Dandelion Fire and The Chestnut King, and now there’s a prequel called The Door Before.

Andrew Peterson’s fantasy series begins with On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness and continues with:
North! Or Be Eaten
The Monster in the Hollows
The Warden and the Wolf-King
If you like the first book in this series, you should definitely continue reading the rest of the books because I think they get better as the series progresses.

The Chronicles of Prydain are right up there with Lewis’s works, must-read fantasy for the Narnia lover. These are taken from Welsh mythology, but the freshness and humor are all due to Mr. ALexander’s whimsical yet philosophically grounded writing. The Prydain books are:
The Book of Three.
The Black Cauldron.
The Castle of Llyr.
Taran Wanderer.
The High King.
Read them all, in that order, to learn of an assistant pig-keeper, an oracular pig, fair folk, cauldron-born warriors, a princess enchantress, bards and minstrels, sorcerers and witches, and kings and queens.

The Wilderking Trilogy by Jonathan Rogers. This three-volume story of Aidan of Corenwald has Biblical parallels, but the setting is in a swampy land that reminded me of Florida or Georgia. These stories of Aidan and his relationship with King Darrow, Prince Steren, and the feechifolk are
The Bark of the Bog Owl.
The Secret of the Wilderking
The Way of the Swamp King.

Dealing With Dragons by Patrica Wrede, Book One of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. Other books in this delightfully humorous series featuring an independent princess and some grumpy dragons are:
Searching for Dragons
Calling on Dragons
Talking to Dragons

Other possibilities:
E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It.
Half Magic by Edward Eager. Four children are able to make wishes, but only have them half-fulfilled.
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. Tom hears the grandfather clock strike 13 and finds himself able to go back in time into a Victorian-era garden.
The Gammage Cup by Carolyn Kendall. The story of five non-conformist Minnipins who become unlikely heroes. The Periods, stodgy old conservatives with names such as Etc. and Geo., are wonderful parodies of those who are all caught up in the forms and have forgotten the meanings. And Muggles, Mingy, Gummy, Walter the Earl, and Curley Green, the Minnipins who don’t quite fit in and who paint their doors colors other than green, are wonderful examples of those pesky artistic/scientific types who live just outside the rules of polite society.

If you like the Boxcar children books by Gertrude Chandler Warner . . .

Jul7

For the month of July, I’m planning a series of posts about readalikes: what to read (or what to suggest to your favorite child reader) when you’ve read all of your favorite author’s books or all of the books of a certain genre that you know of, and you don’t know what to read next.

Readalikes for the Boxcar Children books are plentiful, but the older titles are better. In fact, I only recommend the Boxcar children books in the original series up through number nineteen, Benny Uncovers a Mystery. The first nineteen Boxcar Children books were actually written by Gertrude Chandler Warner and are delightfully old-fashioned and wholesome in attitude. The 100+ subsequent titles in the series were written after Ms. Warner’s death in 1979, and I have been told that the books in the new series are not nearly as good as the originals.

Some follow-up suggestions for Boxcar Children:

Helen Fuller Orton’s mysteries. I have recommended Ms. Orton’s books before. Similar in style and reading level to The Boxcar Children series, the mysteries by Helen Fuller Orton are more intriguing and more varied in characters and plot than The Boxcar Children mysteries. Mystery in the Pirate Oak tells the story of Chad and Ellie Turner and their search for a missing silver box hidden long ago in the old oak tree in the nearby meadow. Grandmother Hale is hopeful that if the box could be found it might have something in it that would provide enough cash to fix her leaking roof and have the old house painted. Can Chad and Ellie find the sixty year old silver box before someone else does and before summer vacation is over?
Other books by Helen Fuller Orton, worth searching for if you have readers who enjoy the Boxcar Children:
Mystery of the Hidden Book.
Secret of the Rosewood Box.
Mystery of the Secret Drawer.
Mystery of the Lost Letter.
Mystery in the Apple Orchard.
Mystery Up the Winding Stair.
Mystery at the Little Red School-House.
Mystery in the Old Red Barn.
Mystery over the Brick Wall.

The Morgan Bay mysteries by John and Nancy Rambeau. If you have any of the books in this series hanging about in your attic and you want to get rid of them, send them my way. I own three of the eight books in this reading textbook series, and I’d love to have there rest. I enjoyed them when I was about seven or eight years old, and I’ve enjoyed recommending them to the younger readers in my library. The series starts out on about a second grade reading level and moves gently and progressively up to about third or fourth grade level within the series. For that reason and for reasons of plot development, the books are best read in order.
The Mystery of Morgan Castle.
The Mystery of the Missing Marlin.
The Mystery of the Marble Angel.
The Mystery of the Midnight Visitor.
The Mystery of the Marauder’s Gold.
The Mystery of the Musical Ghost.
The Mystery of Monks’ Island.
The Mystery of the Myrmidon’s Journey.

If the appeal of the Boxcar Children books lies not in their mystery or their simplified vocabulary and plot, but rather in the “romance” of four children living in a boxcar on their own, doing their own homemaking and supporting themselves by their own ingenuity, then the following books might appeal:

Mandy by Julie Edwards. Many, an orphan who longs to have her own home, discovers an abandoned cottage in the woods and fixes it up as her very own secret playhouse.
The Family Under The Bridge by Natalie Savage Carlson. Armand, an elderly street dweller in Paris, shares his home under the bridge with a poverty-stricken young mother and her three children.
Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink. Sisters Mary and Jean are shipwrecked with four babies on a deserted island, and the two older children make a home for themselves and the littles ones.
The Children Who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham. I haven’t read this one, but it sounds intriguing.

If you like Lauren Tarshis’s I Survived books . .

Jul6

For the month of July, I’m planning a series of posts about readalikes: what to read (or what to suggest to your favorite child reader) when you’ve read all of your favorite author’s books or all of the books of a certain genre that you know of, and you don’t know what to read next.

Scholastic has published a series of books by Lauren Tarshis about boys who survived great disasters. Some of the books feature true stories of young survivors, and others are historical fiction. I haven’t read any of the books in this series, but they seem to be quite popular. So, if you’re a fan of the I Survived series, here are a few other books that you might like:

Real Kids, Real Adventures is a series of several volumes by Deborah Morris, published by Broadman and Holman. Each book gives short, true adventure stories about kids facing shark attacks, plane crashes, tornadoes, fires, blizzards, and more. I haven’t read any of these books, but they should be a good fit for fans of the I Survived series.

We Were There . . . series. The series consists of 36 titles, first released between 1955 and 1963 by Grosset & Dunlap. Each book tells the story of an historical event in American or world history told through the eyes of a child. Maybe not quite as exciting as the I Survived stories, these books are nevertheless well-written, for the most part, by well-known and skilled children’s writers of the time, and the stories are compelling and informative. Here’s a list of the 36 books in the series in approximate chronological order:

We Were There with Caesar’s Legions by Robert N. Webb
We Were There with Richard the Lionhearted in the Crusades, by Robert N. Webb
We Were There with Cortes and Montezuma, by Benjamin Appel
We Were There with the Mayflower Pilgrims, by Robert N. Webb
We Were There at the Boston Tea Party, by Robert N. Webb
We Were There at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, by Felix Sutton
We Were There with Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, by Robert N. Webb
We Were There when Washington Won at Yorktown, by Earl Schenck Miers
We Were There on the Nautilus, by Robert N. Webb
We Were There with Lewis and Clark, by James Munves
We Were There with Jean Lafitte at New Orleans, by Iris Vinton
We Were There at the Opening of the Erie Canal, by Enid Lamonte Meadowcroft
We Were There with the California Rancheros, by Stephen Holt
We Were There with Charles Darwin on H.M.S. Beagle, by Philip Eisenberg
We Were There at the Battle of the Alamo, by Margaret Cousins
We Were There on the Oregon Trail, by William O. Steele
We Were There with the California Forty-Niners, by Stephen Holt
We Were There with Lincoln in the White House, by Earl Schenck Miers
We Were There at the Battle of Gettysburg, by Alida Sims Malkus
We Were There when Grant Met Lee at Appomattox, by Earl Schenck Miers
We Were There with the Pony Express, by William O. Steele
We Were There on the Chisholm Trail, by Ross McLaury Taylor
We Were There on the Santa Fe Trail, by Ross McLaury Taylor
We Were There at the Driving of the Golden Spike, by David Shepherd
We Were There with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, by Robert N. Webb
We Were There in the Klondike Gold Rush, by Benjamin Appel
We Were There at the Oklahoma Land Run, by Jim Kjelgaard
We Were There at the First Airplane Flight, by Felix Sutton
We Were There with the Lafayette Escadrille, by Clayton Knight and Katherine Sturges Knight
We Were There with Byrd at the South Pole, by Charles S. Strong
We Were There at the Battle of Britain, by Clayton Knight and Katherine Sturges Knight
We Were There at Pearl Harbor, by Felix Sutton
We Were There at the Battle for Bataan, by Benjamin Appel
We Were There at the Normandy Invasion, by Clayton Knight
We Were There at the Battle of the Bulge, by David Shepherd
We Were There at the Opening of the Atomic Era, by James Munves

A few other individual fiction titles about children who survive natural and man-made disasters:
The Terrible Wave by Marden Dahlstadt. The Johnstown flood of 1889.
Night of the Twisters by Ivy Ruckman.
Galveston’s Summer of the Storm by Julie Lake.
Earthquake at Dawn by Kristana Gregory.
The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 by Laurence Yep.
SOS Titanic by Eve Bunting.
Leepike Ridge by N.D. Wilson.
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. Survival after a plane crash.
Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry.
Night of the Howling Dogs by Graham Salisbury. Tsunami.
Ash Road by Ivan Southall. Wildfire in the Australian outback.
Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

Then, there’s also nonfiction about great disasters and escapes:
The Great Fire by Jim Murphy.
Blizzard! by Jim Murphy.
Disaster at Johnstown: The Great Flood by Hildegard Dolson. (Landmark history)
The Battle for Iwo Jima by Robert Leckie. (Landmark history)

If you like the American Girl books . . .

Jul4

For the month of July, I’m planning a series of posts about readalikes: what to read (or what to suggest to your favorite child reader) when you’ve read all of your favorite author’s books or all of the books of a certain genre that you know of, and you don’t know what to read next. Molly and Felicity and Kaya and Kirsten and all the rest are great, but what’s to read after you’ve devoured all of the American Girl books?

The Childhood of Famous Americans (often abbreviated as COFA) series is written on a similar reading level to the American Girls series, and the books, although not exactly fiction, are also not exactly nonfiction biography. They are biography told as a story, somewhat fictionalized, emphasizing the childhood years of famous Americans. Many of the titles are about girl heroines such as Martha Washington, Clara Barton, Jessie Fremont, Elizabeth Blackwell, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others. Following up fictional American girls with the stories of real American girls is sure winner for the fourth of July or anytime of the year.

Once Upon America is a series for ages seven to eleven, about fictional children living through changes and events in American history. The following titles feature female protagonists (there are also several that feature boys):
Hannah’s Fancy Notions: A Story of Industrial New England by Pat Ross.
Close to Home: A Story of the Polio Epidemic by Lydia Weaver.
The Day It Rained Forever: A Story of the Johnstown Flood by Virginia T. Gross.
Fire!: The Beginnings of the Labor Movement by Barbara Diamond Goldin.
A Long Way to Go: A Story of Women’s Right to Vote by Zibby Oneal.
Night Bird: A Story of the Seminole Indians by Kathleen V. Kudlinski.
Tough Choices: A Story of the Vietnam War by Nancy Antle.

My America, a series of fictional diaries of young children during American history, written for the same age group about seven to eleven, offers the following titles:

Elizabeth’s Jamestown Colony Diaries by Patricia Hermes:
Our Strange New Land
The Starving Time
Season of Promise
Hope’s Revolutionary War Diaries by Kristiana Gregory:
Five Smooth Stones
We Are Patriots
When Freedom Comes
Meg’s Prairie Diaries by Kate McMullan:
As Far As I Can See
For This Land
A Fine Start
Sofia’s Immigrant Diaries by Kathryn Lasky:
Hope in My Heart
Home at Last
An American Spring
Virginia’s Civil War Diaries by Mary Pope Osborne:
My Brother’s Keeper
After the Rain
A Time to Dance

A step up from the American Girl and the My America books are the fiction books in the series Dear America, which are also written in diary or journal form and tell the tale of a fictional participant in some of the most compelling events and eras of American history. These books are suitable for girls ages 12 and up. Some titles (there are many more) in this series are:

A Journey to the New World: The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple, Mayflower, 1620 by Kathryn Lasky.
The Winter of Red Snow: The Diary of Abigail Jane Stewart, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 1777 by Kristiana Gregory.
The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis, Seattle, Washington, 1941 by Kirby Larson (September 2010)
Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, RMS Titanic, 1912 by Ellen Emerson White.
A Picture of Freedom: The Diary of Clotee, a Slave Girl, Belmont Plantation, Virginia, 1859 by Patricia McKissack.
Like the Willow Tree: The Diary of Lydia Amelia Pierce, Portland, Maine, 1918 by Lois Lowry.
A Light in the Storm: The Diary of Amelia Martin, Fenwick Island, Delaware, 1861 by Karen Hesse.
When Will This Cruel War Be Over?: The Diary of Emma Simpson, Gordonsville, Virginia, 1864 by Barry Denenberg.
Cannons at Dawn: The Second Diary of Abigail Jane Stewart, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 1779 by Kristiana Gregory.
Standing in the Light: The Diary of Catharine Carey Logan, Delaware Valley, Pennsylvania, 1763 by Mary Pope Osborne (May 2011)
I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly: The Diary of Patsy, a Freed Girl, Mars Bluff, South Carolina, 1865 by Joyce Hansen.
With the Might of Angels: The Diary of Dawnie Rae Johnson, Hadley, Virginia, 1954 by Andrea Davis Pinkney.
I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1691 by Lisa Rowe Fraustino.
Behind the Masks: The Diary of Angeline Reddy, Bodie, California, 1880 by Susan Patron.
Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Diary of Hattie Campbell, The Oregon Trail, 1847 by Kristiana Gregory.
Christmas After All: The Diary of Minnie Swift, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1932 by Kathryn Lasky.
A City Tossed and Broken: The Diary of Minnie Bonner, San Francisco, California, 1906 by Judy Blundell.
Hear My Sorrow: The Diary of Angela Denoto, a Shirtwaist Worker, New York City, 1909 by Deborah Hopkinson.

Happy Fourth of July, and may those who want them find many, many American girls to read about and admire.

If you like Little House on the Prairie . . .

Jul1

For the month of July, I’m planning a series of posts about readalikes: what to read (or what to suggest to your favorite child reader) when you’ve read all of your favorite author’s books or all of the books of a certain genre that you know of, and you don’t know what to read next. Here are a few suggestions for Little House on the Prairie fans.

First up, author Melissa Wiley has written a series of books about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s grandmother and great-grandmother:
Books about Martha Morse, Laura’s great-grandmother by Melissa Wiley:
Little House in the Highlands
The Far Side of the Loch
Down to the Bonny Glen
Beyond the Heather Hills

Books about Charlotte Tucker, Laura’s grandmother, also by Melissa Wiley:
Little House by Boston Bay
On Tide Mill Lane
The Road from Roxbury
Across the Puddingstone Dam

Another duo, Maria Wilkes and Celia Wilkins, has written about Laura’s mother’s childhood.
Books about Caroline Quiner Ingalls, Laura’s mother, by Maria Wilkes & Celia Wilkins:
Little House in Brookfield
Little Town at the Crossroads
Little Clearing in the Woods
On Top of Concord Hill
Across the Rolling River
Little City by the Lake
A Little House of Their Own

Books about Laura’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, by her heir, Roger Lea MacBride:
Little House on Rocky Ridge
Little Farm in the Ozarks
In the Land of the Big Red Apple
The Other Side of the Hill
Little Town in the Ozarks
New Dawn on Rocky Ridge
On the Banks of the Bayou
Bachelor Girl

Then, there’s this set published by Harper Collins and written by various well-known authors who are also Little House fans:
Old Town in the Green Groves (Little House) by Cynthia Rylant.
Nellie Oleson Meets Laura Ingalls (Little House) by Heather Williams.
Mary Ingalls on Her Own (Little House Sequel) by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel.

Carol Ryrie Brink published Caddie Woodlawn in 1935, and it received the Newbery Medal in 1936. It’s about a girl growing up on the frontier in Wisconsin, before and during the Civil War (1860’s). Caddie is set during much the same time period as the Little House books by Ms. Wilder. A second book with more stories about Caddie and her family is called Magical Melons.

Louise Erdrich’s Birchbark House is about Omakayas, a seven-year-old Native American girl of the Ojibwa tribe. It’s a good counter-balance to the portrayal of Native American people in the Little House books, which tends to be somewhat negative and stereotypical. The books in the series so far are:
The Birchbark House
The Game of Silence
The Porcupine Year
Chickadee
Makoons

Latsch Family Farm series by Anne Pellowski. These are a series of five novels about life in the Polish Catholic farm communities in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin. Each book tells about one year in the life of the author’s great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and the author herself in the last book, Stairstep Farm. The books, which do not need to be read in chronological order, are:
First Farm in the Valley: Anna’s Story
Willow Wind Farm: Betsy’s Story
Betsy’s Up-and-Down Year
Winding Valley Farm: Annie’s Story
Stairstep Farm: Anna Rose’s Story

The Orphan Train Adventures series are also worthy and exciting reads for lovers of frontier-setting fiction. The books tell about the adventures of a family of orphans from New York City who are split up and sent west on the Orphan Train to live with frontier families.
A Family Apart (Orphan Train Adventures, #1)
Caught in the Act (Orphan Train Adventures, #2)
In The Face of Danger (Orphan Train Adventures, #3)
A Dangerous Promise (Orphan Train Adventures, #4)
Keeping Secrets (Orphan Train Adventures, #5)
A Place to Belong (Orphan Train Adventures, #6)
Circle of Love (Orphan Train Adventures, #7)

If you finish all of these and still want more you can always enjoy a few nonfiction spin-offs:
The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker. Illustrated by Garth Williams.
My Little House Sewing Book by Margaret Irwin.
My Little House Craft Book by Carolyn Strom Collins.
The World of Little House by Carolyn Strom Collins.
Laura Ingalls Wilder by Gwenda Blair.

All of the above books are for approximately the same maturity and reading level as the original Little House books. Tomorrow I’ll post about what to read when you’ve sort of outgrown Little House but still want to read prairie and frontier adventures: Little House for young adults.