Dear America

Eleven-year-old Abigail presents a diary account of life in Valley Forge from December 1777 to July 1778 as General Washington prepares his troops to fight the British.

"It's 1859 and Clotee, a twelve-year-old slave, has the most wonderful, terrible secret. She knows that if she shares it with the wrong person, she will face unimaginable consequences. What is her secret? While doing her job of fanning her master's son during his daily lessons, Clotee has taught herself to read and write. However, she soon learns that the tutor, Ely Harms, has a secret of his own. In a time when literacy is one of the most valuable...

Twelve-year-old Zippy, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, keeps a diary account of the first eighteen months of her family's life on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1903-1904.

A Quaker girl girl's diary reflects her experiences growing up in the Delaware and her capture by Lenape Indians in 1763.

While traveling in 1883 with her Italian American family (including a meddlesome little sister) and other immigrant pioneers to a utopian community in Idaho, fourteen-year-old Teresa keeps a diary of her experiences along the way.

In the diary account of her life at a government-run Pennsylvania boarding school in 1880, a twelve-year-old Sioux Indian girl reveals a great need to find a way to help her people.

Eleven-year-old Nellie Lee Love records in her diary the events of 1919, when her family moves from Tennessee to Chicago, hoping to leave the racism and hatred of the South behind.

During the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Austria, twelve-year-old Julie escapes to America to live with her relatives in New York City.

Twelve-year-old Amber Billows, upset to be moving once again to follow her father's reporting job, cannot help loving Hawaii, but the peace of her tropical paradise is shattered on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.

A diary account of fourteen-year-old Susanna Fairchild's life in 1849, when her father succumbs to gold fever on the way to establish his medical practice in Oregon after losing his wife and money on their steamship journey from New York. Includes a historical note.

In 1932, a twelve-year-old girl who lost her sight in an accident keeps a diary, recorded by her twin sister, in which she describes life at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts.

A diary account of thirteen-year-old Kathleen Bowen's life in Washington, D.C. in 1917, as she juggles concerns about the national battle for women's suffrage, the war in Europe, and her own school work and family. Includes a historical note.

In 1968 Massachusetts, after her brother Patrick goes to fight in Vietnam, fifteen-year-old Molly records in her diary how she misses her brother, volunteers at a Veterans' Administration Hospital, and tries to make sense of the war in Vietnam and the tumultuous events in the United States. Includes historical notes.

Brought up in France as the African slave companion of a nobleman's daughter, thirteen-year-old Zettie records the events of 1763, when she and her mistress escape to the New World where they are inadvertently drawn into the hostilities of the ongoing French and Indian War and, eventually, find a new direction to their lives.

From the winter of 1779 until 1781, Abigail Stewart and her family follow the path of her father's Continental Army unit after their Valley Forge home burns down, enduring harsh winters and scarce food, and narrowly escaping danger time and again.