Dear Canada

Dear Canada series
Various authors

Dear Canada is a series of books about girls in different time periods in Canada's history, but they are not all written by one author.

They are written as if that person wrote a diary. The characters are fictional but other authors wrote it as if the main character wrote it. Each book takes place in a time and location in Canada. In all of the books you can read about main character and see real pictures of the time period at the back of the books.

I like the series because it's written in a diary format and it teaches Canadian history in an interesting way. Also, some of the girls featured in the books are from immigrant families and come from different cultures, and I like to learn the foreign words and phrases. I have discovered through the series how multicultural our country is and how these different cultures shape our country today.

As I am home educated, this is a great way to learn Canadian history. The series is meant for children ages 12 and up, but I'm nine and I love it. I started reading them when I was eight, so I think most Canadians girls ages eight and up would enjoy them.

There are 32 Dear Canada books (http://www.scholastic.ca/dearcanada/books/), but I've only read six. Here are the six I've read, ranked from most favorite:



1) Orphan at my Door
The Home Child Diary of  Victoria Cope, Guelph, Ontario,1897 (by Jean Little ).

2) To Stand on my own 
 The Polio Epidemic Diary Of Noreen Robertson, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1937 (by Barbara Haworth-Attard)

3) Not a Nickel to Spare
The Great Depression Diary of Sally Cohen, Toronto, Ontario, 1932 (by Perry Nodelman).

4) A Desperate road to Freedom
The Underground Railroad Diary of Julia May Jackson, Virginia to Canada West, 1863-1864 (by Karleen Bradford

5) A Trail of Broken Dreams
The Gold Rush Diary of Harriet Palmer, Overland to the Caribou, 1862 (by Barbara Haworth-Attard )

6) A Prairie as Wide as the Sea
The Immigrant Diary of Ivy Weatherall, Milorie, Saskatchewan, 1926 (by Sarah Ellis)

A Sea of Sorrows

A Sea of Sorrows
The Typhus Epidemic Diary of Johanna Leary, 1847
Norah McClintock

A Sea of Sorrows is a Dear Canada book about a Irish immigrant girl who was travelling from Ireland to Canada because of the "Great Hunger," an Irish potato famine from 1845-1851.  About three thousand immigrants left on ships for Canada because of this famine, and many died on ships on the way to Canada.


Johanna Leary is the main character in the story and an example of those who came to Canada with families searching for a better life. Her younger brother Patrick died of Typhus during their voyage, and her mother and father died of the same fever after they arrived in Canada. Johanna became an orphan.

I like this story because it shows how hard it is to be a orphan and how they coped. It also shows what different people thought about the Irish. In this story I stayed up late reading because everything was so sad and I kept reading because I kept hoping for it to get better. And it did, eventually, but not without heartbreak in between.

I don't like what Johanna said about Mrs. Johnson, even if Mrs. Johnson said that the Irish are lazy. I also don't like how Johanna slapped Mrs. Johnson even if Mrs. Johnson slapped her. Slapping back would not be the right thing to do. Turning the other cheek (literally!) would be a better thing to do. But it shows how difficult and emotional time it was.


The author, Norah McClintock, is best known as a young adult mystery novelist, but she did a very good job on this book. In fact, the author's great great grandmother Mary Ellen O'Leary traveled on a ship from Ireland to Canada during the same time period but died some time after she left. It was because of her mother's research that she learned about her ancestors and how they came to Canada. Ms. O'Leary had at least three children, two of which were born Ireland and another was believed to be born in Canada. The author doesn't know much more than that, and said she has still many questions she wants answered.

Maybe she tried to answer some questions by researching and writing this book.

A Sea of Sorrows really is a sea of sorrows. There is just no end to all the sad things happening in this book. But even though it is sad, it is still worth reading, so read it. You will be glad you did.

Not a Nickel to Spare

Not a Nickel to Spare
The Great Depression Diary of Sally Cohen, 1932
by Perry Nodelman

Not a Nickel to Spare is a Dear Canada book about a Jewish girl named Sally Cohen and her family who lived during the Great Depression. The people and events in this story are fictional, but Perry Nodelman based many of the details on her parent's life in Toronto in the 1930s.

I like this book because it was interesting to find out the meaning of Yiddish word used in the book (it provides a glossary at the back). It was also very funny in places, like when a box of matches fell into the bread dough Sally's mother was making and then they didn't know if it was kosher or not. They ended up taking the dough to the Rabbi, who said it was okay to eat.

I found I could relate to Sally because she loved to read like I do and The Five Little Peppers was her favourite book, and I really enjoyed that book as well. And although we aren't Jewish like the Cohens, my family and I keep the sabbath and scriptural holidays, such as Passover (Pesach), Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hosanna), Day of Atonement (Yom Kipur).

I didn't like how Gert and Sophie both went against their father's wishes and went out with men who were not Jewish. It says in the epilogue that Gert married the man she kept going out with but Sophie married a man her father approved of.

I think people should read this book so they can understand the difficulties Jews faced at that time and what life was like during the Great Depression.

This book would be enjoyed most by someone age 9 and up, but someone of every age would like this book.