#dear canada

[cens105]

This is super old news, but I didn't know Jacob was also on board with the Keanu-Hudson father-son movie.

[samantha-and-nellie]

Hey! :) I just discovered that my university library has several of the Dear America and History Mysteries books, which is super cool, and I was wondering if you knew of any other books that are similar to those (I also know about the Girls of Many Lands)

oh my goooooood, love dear america and history mysteries!

this might not be exactly what you are looking for, but dear america does in fact have an extended universe. there is, of course, the two versions of the dear america series (the original series and the 2010 relaunch), as well as the my america series meant for younger readers, the royal diaries, and my name is america for boys. HOWEVER, there are then other countries who have their own series: canada has dear canada (which is the only one i've occasionally seen in us libraries) and i am canada, uk has my story and my royal story, australia has my australian story, new zealand has my (new zealand) story, and india seems to have dear india and a princess's diary. furthermore, if you speak french, there's mon histoire from france (and some, if not all, of the canada books have french versions), or if you speak spanish, there's the diarios mexicanos. (editing to say that i also might've just found a welsh-language version called fy hanes i.)

... however, obviously a lot of these are noooot exactly accessible to most people. i was able to get all of the dear canada series as a kid (but that was mostly thanks to living close to the border), and have a decent number of the uk books just by virtue of having been the tiniest bit obsessive about this all as a child, and one mon histoire that i still haven't read yet. so. tldr on the dear america expanded universe: just try to get your hands on what you can, since there's simply an insane amount to work from, and most of them that i've read have been pretty solid!

that being said, i also recently discovered (entirely by accident, i stumbled across one of the books at a thrift store) a series that seems to have published by scholastic in an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the og dear america series. i don't really have any evidence for this other than the publication date, the author crossovers from the da universe, and the general look of the books since there is very little info about this series online, but i think all of that already is a pretty compelling case. anyways! the series is called portraits, and the three books published all take a famous painting of a girl and write a backstory for it. i have not read the one that i found yet, so i can't technically recommend the series, but it is another one out there!

(pardon the weird angle, i was trying to show that the spine has a little portrait on it like the da books.)

i could absolutely keep going here, but one last series that i think is spiritually linked to da/aghm are the lady grace mysteries. i am 70% sure they had a us release at some point, but the series is british, so no promises on how easy it is to find these books. the series follows lady grace, the youngest lady-in-waiting to queen elizabeth i, as she encounters mysteries around the court, and are written as her own personal journals. i was lucky enough to encounter these at my childhood library, so if anyone else read them, please let me know and say where you ran into them!

[y2kbeautyandother2000sstuff]

I saw you said you like seeing other people's collections and I hope you don't mind, but this is my collection of every single book from the Dear America and Dear Canada series

I also have all the Royal Diaries books but they're not displayed in the same way

I don't mind at all!! This is excellent, what a beautiful collection! the colors alone are lovely, but the fact that you have every one of these is just WOW.

I've never heard of Dear Canada, but I'm about to go look them up and post some. Thanks for sending this in!!!

I love the Royal Diaries ones as well, so if you get a picture of them I'd love to see it!

[gwystyl]

I got bored and made old-style covers for the new dear america books

[shadysadie]

I just found what I think is my favorite Titanic book ever

Growing up I was a Titanic NeurodivergentTM so I read a LOT of Titanic stories, any series that had the Titanic, that was the first and often only book I read: Magic Tree House, I Survived, Dear America, Ranger in Time, True Disasters, you name it, I've read it, and that doesn't even cover the stand alone books: Titanic Cat, Titanic Crossing, A Night to Remember, hell I even checked out Futility: or the Wreck of the Titan (I didn't finish that one, but I gave it a valiant effort).

I've seen the movies, TV shows, documentaries, animated musicals, stage musical. I am pretty thoroughly educated on the Titanic. But, that doesn't mean I'm not always willing to look for more, so when I found out that Canada had their own version of Dear America, you can guess what the first one I tried to get my hands on was.

Since the first Dear America book I ever read was Voyage on The Great Titanic, it only seemed fitting that That Fatal Night was the first Dear Canada book I read and honestly, I am so glad I made that choice.

Since both Dear America and Dear Canada books are written diary-style. And I was confused when this diary started May 2, 1912. Notably after the Titanic had sank, unlike Voyage on the Great Titanic which started several weeks before the ship set sail and ended after the sinking. By contrast this one starts with the main character starts by explicitly stating that she isn't going to talk about the Titanic.

Instead the first half of the book deals with her adjusting to being home, being dogged by newspaper reporters or kids at school either wanting a detailed account of what happened or calling her an attention hog. She goes through a massive personality shift and has trouble going outside. Since she lives in Halifax we also get her reaction to the body recovery/identification process. We also get her parents talking about what it was like at home hearing various news reports ranging from "the ship was damaged but will be towed to shore" to "it sank but everyone lived" to "it sank and everyone died" and no one knew what to believe.

It isn't until halfway through the book that she even starts to describe her time on the ship and when she does, it is surprisingly short. The passage about the sinking itself is only two pages.

But the part talking about being on the Carpathia is longer than I have EVER seen a Carpathia section. She talks about how when she finally got off the lifeboat she knew she should be relieved but all she could think of was how badly she had to go to the bathroom. She talked about not knowing whether or not there were other ships rescued other lifeboats or if anyone not on the Carpathia was dead. She talked about how a woman with a baby was stealing napkins from the dining hall because she had ran out of diapers. She talked about how her grandmother had made her a special dress to wear when they arrived in New York with a knit sweater and matching hair ribbons but instead she showed up in a dirty shift wearing having worn the same underwear for 5 days straight. And she felt guilty because people died and she shouldn't be sad about her lost hair ribbons and dirty underwear but can't help it.

All these little human details, these little inconveniences and discomforts made this book feel so different. I have seen so many stories about the glamour of the Titanic and the tragedy of the Titanic, but it always ends when the ship sinks. This is the first time I have ever read a story that really delves into what it means to survive that tragedy.

[tybalt-you-saucy-boi]

Have you read any of the Dear Canada books?

No, I'm Canadian 🇨🇦

No, I'm not Canadian

Yes, I'm Canadian 🇨🇦

Yes, I'm not Canadian

Other; See Results

Voting ended onMar 1, 2025

And if you have read them, I've made a quiz to test your knowledge if you can name the titles of all 33 books in the series!

All Dear Canada Book Titles

Can you name all 33 of the Dear Canada book series titles (excluding the companion novels)?

[snortleme]

Tim Thompson, a CBC Sports Producer/Editor, put “Dear Canada” together not for CBC but as a gift for Canadians. “No one asked me to do it, no money’s being made, it’s just from the heart for the heart. When something you love is under attack you need to stand up for it…just felt compelled to do it.”

Ring the bells…there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in…

[brb-on-a-quest]

Just for the Halibut (the hell of it; pun intended pls laugh)

My dear abroad North Canadian Watson,

I have begun my investigation in such a manner that I shall relay all of the information for you to take down in that Tumblr blog of yours to share with your large and growing readership. I trust you will keep the facts straight as always, dear watson.

The halibut treaty of 1923 was the first ecological conservation aimed at #savethefishies as it opened a fishing season from November to Feburary. it was also one of the first treaties you ppls actually signed without getting The King of England involves (aww look at baby Canada taking her first steps as an independent nation).

British govt (as the overprotective girlfriend from the revolutionary war) was like "Canada why are you doing things without my permission?? I didn't approve of you negotiating halibut with the United Sates (like geez, Brits, move on). The prime minister at all (last name King which doesn't make this confusing at all) was like "well this really doesn't concern you so we don't need you."

british King *spluttering* "well that's illegal" (rightfully so, but Canadian king threatend to send a delegation to do the treaty to DC and British King Couldn't Do Much About it- Watson, are you paying attention?)

As far as you stealing fish from South Canadians, that's primarily because the border between the Canada but a little bit more north and more east (alaska) and Normal Canada was disputed. But unclear. To be fair the stealing part came from an unsourced instagram reel and maybe unfounded. But supposedly this is one of the crucial events of getting canadian autonomy which is cool bc i had no clue how you managed to do that before without going the 'Murican Route.

With love,

A south canadian sherlock who's wondering if there's more to this halibut story than meets the eye and should do more research.

Halibuts are a creature i wouldn't mind if you stole them tho

Edit: forgot to tag @igotthisaccountunderduress and also my sources were wikipedia (shameful ik) and the canadian encyclopedia. don't make me use mla i will cry.