Summary: When ten-year-old Ava uses her writing talents to help her older sister overcome her shyness, both girls learn the impact their words and stories can have on the world around them.
Sourcebooks
Tag: diaries
City Tossed and Broken, by Judy Blundell
Summary: It is 1906, and when her family is cheated out of their tavern, fourteen-year-old Minnie Bonner is forced to become a maid to the Sump family, who are moving to San Francisco–three weeks before the great earthquake.
Scholastic
Dear America: Behind The Masks, by Susan Patron
Summary: Newbery Award-winning author Susan Patron brings her talents to the beloved Dear America series in this exciting story of a girl growing up in the Wild West, in a California gold mining town. Growing up in the wild gold-mining town of Bodie, California, in the 1880s, Angeline Reddy has seen it all — saloons, brawls, and a whole lot of desperation. When her father, Bodie’s greatest lawyer, is declared murdered, Angie knows deep in her heart that he isn’t dead and decides it is up to her to solve the mystery of what happened to him. But when her mother takes ill and a mysterious ghost appears, putting together the puzzle pieces seems impossible. Not to mention, a gang of vigilantes, the 601, is raging out of control, running folks out of town, and nobody seems safe. Will Angie, with the help of her friends Ellie and Ling Loi, and the mysterious and tragically handsome Antoine, be able to uncover the secret of her father’s disappearance?Scholastic
Like the Willow Tree: the Diary of Lydia Amelia Pierce, by Lois Lowry
Dear America series
Summary: After being orphaned during the influenza epidemic of 1918, eleven-year-old Lydia Pierce and her fourteen-year-old brother are taken by their grieving uncle to be raised in the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake.
Scholastic
