#scholastic canada

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North American Diaries: Trio Master List

(Not including My America, I am Canada, or Diarios Mexicanos...but I digress).

I like to group Dear America, Dear Canada and My Name is America together when I read them as I find them to be the most similar to each other, which means keeping chronology straight through three series. With over 90 books that can be challenging, so I've compiled a timeline with what I think is the best order to read them in. Apologies if I made any mistakes in the years, especially for the earlier books.

Google Doc 

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Advanced copy of The Knowing courtesy of the store's fantabulous Scholastic rep. I'm actually nervous to read this one. I loved Rook and adored The Forgetting. Can Cameron continue to hit them out of the park? Probably. She really is that good.

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A Christmas to Remember. Second of the three Dear Canada holiday collections. Like before, no rhyme or reason to the order of the stories. It contains two of the three Jewish characters and in both cases, Hanukkah takes a backseat to Christmas. That’s not great.

Like the previous anthology, while the editor describes the stories as “the Christmas after,” that isn’t always the case.

Goodreads star rating: 4/5

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A Season for Miracles. The first of three Dear Canada holiday collections. How much you enjoy each one depends on how much you like the individual characters. This collection contains a lot of the characters from the earlier time periods. No rhyme or reason to the order of the stories.

None of the three Jewish characters are in this one which doesn’t make sense, since Turned Away had already been published.

One thing I like is that we get Victoria’s story from Marianna’s perspective. We’ll see it once more but I wish they’d done this with other characters.

Goodreads star rating: 4/5

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Pieces of the Past, by Carol Matas. The first time I read this book I was worried how it would trigger me. This time I knew what to expect so I found it easier to read. Rose is 13 for almost the entire story but her memories are from ages 3 to 9. Her earlier memories (and a couple fever dreams) are more detailed than is realistic for someone so young.

There is a brief reference to Devorah from Turned Away. As I mentioned in that previous post, I am still not entirely convinced that Dear Canada needed two diaries so similar to each other. This is also one of two stories published back-to-back with a protagonist named Rose.

There is no mention in the historical note about other groups who were targeted by the Nazis.

Goodreads star rating: 4/5

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Hoping for Home. The non-holiday Dear Canada story anthology. Aside from being new characters, the other big difference is that it’s co-ed. Short stories aren’t my thing as I feel like they don’t give you enough time to connect to the characters, so I don’t feel like this is the most necessary contribution to the series.  “Ghost Town” is split between two narrators which makes it so that you get even less time to identify with them.

Half of the stories are about topics that already were or would be covered in full-length diaries. These include: War Guests, Home Children, the Underground Railroad, Japanese internment, Jewish refugees, and Chinese immigrants in the 1920’s.

The whole concept of characters finding home in Canada is often not realized, or happens conveniently fast. “Entrance Certificate” is branded as a story about self-discovery rather than finding a home, but it’s not really. It’s just very, very bizarre.

“Hattie’s Home” completely ignores the fact that before WWII began in Europe, it was already going on in Asia. Since Hattie had been living in Formosa (Taiwan) she should have been aware.

The most interesting thing is that "The Charleston on the Trapline” is about Violet Pesheen’s grandmother, Insy Pimash. This anthology was published in 2011 and These are My Words was published in 2016, so I wonder how long Ruby Slipperjack knew she was going to continue the family’s legacy.

Goodreads star rating: 2/5

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Torn Apart, by Susan Aihoshi. One of three diaries across the different series that focus on Japanese internment. It’s pretty common knowledge to Americans that this went on in the United States, but I think far fewer of us know that it happened in Canada too.

My biggest critique is that very little of the story takes place in the internment camp. Maybe if there was less of the story before Pearl Harbor it could have balanced out more.

Don’t know why this is only subtitled as “the internment diary” when Prisoners in the Promised Land, which was released earlier, was subtitled as “the Ukrainian internment diary.”

Goodreads star rating: 4/5

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Prisoners in the Promised Land, by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch. The internment of Ukrainians in Canada was something I had no idea about before reading this book. It also gives a good account of the Great War in the Eastern European theatre.

The story didn’t need to be as long as it was, as a good number of entries are just about the weather or general statements about the war getting bad.

Goodreads star rating: 3/5