Moving
Eight-year-old Alice moves to a new state with her father and brother (mom has died) and faces making new friends in a new school. She has a hard time with this but identifies her successes and slowly becomes open to friendships with more and more people.
I liked how Alice identified how silly it was to be feuding with a group of girls and then reached out to that group and befriended them. There is some incongruity between how this 8-year-old thinks and acts and how a real 8-year-old thinks and acts, but it did not significantly detract from the story.
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Margaret moves with her family from NYC to New Jersey, in part, she suspects, to separate her from her grandmother’s influence. The story focuses on Margaret anticipating puberty and her struggles with trying to choose a religion since she has been raised as “nothing.”
Both Margaret’s sixth grade year and her girls’ club focus on eagerness to grow up and make grown-up decisions. As I read this book, it made me think how important it is to give our kids the tools to make good decisions before they need to make them. In the story, Margaret feels pressure to identify the right religion, learns not to make assumptions about people, and feels pressure to leave childhood.
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While I would not characterize the American Girl stories as particularly quality literature, when factoring in the historical information at the end, they certainly are. This one gives an account of an immigrant family voyaging from Sweden to Minnesota. The trials of this journey are presented through a child’s (Kirsten's) eyes, including the loss of her dear friend, Marta, from cholera.
The book is a good introduction to the topic of immigration and is presented in an approachable way. I would consider all American Girls books as starting points for developing a child’s interest in a given period of history.
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