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Reviews
A Journey to the New World: The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple, Mayflower, 1620 by Kathryn Lasky
jdalton's review against another edition
5.0
When I read this as a young girl I didn’t know I had ancestors who were on this ship, so reading this time was different for me and imagining what life was like for my ancestors.
sammi_jo's review
4.0
This is a cute little book that gives a little look into the life of a pilgrim child. It tells of the good and the bad through a child's eyes. I am from Hingham, Mass and I have had many childhood trips to Plymouth. This book found a way to my heart, hearing familiar names and about the beginning if the settlement which later developed into a colony and eventually my home state.
huncamuncamouse's review
3.0
3.5 stars, but I'm rounding down simply because I remember enjoying this as a kid a lot more than I did now. It makes sense to start the Dear America series with a young pilgrim's voyage to the New World. However, the boat ride becomes tedious/repetitive, and it dominates half the novel. There's a lot of clunkiness with the diary format--including how characters are introduced (or not). Some sort of character chart in the frontmatter would have been helpful.
I remembered being horrified by the descriptions of torture (I learned what being hung, drawn, and quartered was from this book), but what I'd forgotten was just how much death dominates this narrative.* There's very little reflection about it; there are glimpses that Remember is skilled at providing comfort to others who are sick and/or dying. Remember has a surprisingly friendly, open attitudes toward the indigenous people she meets. However, it's a fine line between friendliness and exoticism, and this book falls into that a bit. I also seriously doubt that Remember's parents were just letting her go exploring all the time on her own and chatting with Squanto and other adult men (native or otherwise).
The biggest weakness of this book is the lack of character development for Remember's parents. The father is barely even mentioned until the second half, and it just seemed like a curious choice to have so few interactions between Remember and her family. All in all, this was a perfectly fine beginning to the series, but I know better ones are up ahead.
*Dorothy Bradford definitely dies intentionally, right?
Dear parent count: 1. Bonus: tons of people die in the first year of the "settlement."
I remembered being horrified by the descriptions of torture (I learned what being hung, drawn, and quartered was from this book), but what I'd forgotten was just how much death dominates this narrative.* There's very little reflection about it; there are glimpses that Remember is skilled at providing comfort to others who are sick and/or dying. Remember has a surprisingly friendly, open attitudes toward the indigenous people she meets. However, it's a fine line between friendliness and exoticism, and this book falls into that a bit. I also seriously doubt that Remember's parents were just letting her go exploring all the time on her own and chatting with Squanto and other adult men (native or otherwise).
The biggest weakness of this book is the lack of character development for Remember's parents. The father is barely even mentioned until the second half, and it just seemed like a curious choice to have so few interactions between Remember and her family. All in all, this was a perfectly fine beginning to the series, but I know better ones are up ahead.
*Dorothy Bradford definitely dies intentionally, right?
Dear parent count: 1. Bonus: tons of people die in the first year of the "settlement."
rosexgold's review
2.0
I read a million of these books in elementary school and barely remember them so thought it might be interesting to give them another read and learn all the basic history I should already know.
The story was fine. Kind of boring but I was kind of expecting it.
The story is fiction. There is a section at the end that's supposed to be the "real facts" about what happened...but it completely contradicts the story. So if the author had all that research and knew the facts, why not write the story more factual in the first place??
The story was fine. Kind of boring but I was kind of expecting it.
The story is fiction. There is a section at the end that's supposed to be the "real facts" about what happened...but it completely contradicts the story. So if the author had all that research and knew the facts, why not write the story more factual in the first place??
musiquedevie's review
4.0
A great read by Kathryn Lasky that helps to put you in the shoes of a young girl in the New World.
ainiali's review against another edition
4.0
This is something new to me. About how European started to move & settle down in the New World. Good to learn some history in a simple way.
brookamimi's review
3.0
I learned to read when I was very young. I came to kindergarten reading well enough that I was in a top group by myself. By second grade I was at and eighth-grade level. And I loved to read. By second grade I wanted to read instead of play during recess (though no teacher would let me until third grade). I would go to the library nearly every day and get a new Dear America book and return the one I had read the day before. I was much too young to understand a lot of what was happening, and I probably skimmed more than anything. (How did it take until I was 23 to get diagnosed with ADHD?) But since coming across a good stash of them at a Goodwill last year, I figured it was about time I revisited one of my favorite and most formative childhood book series. I remembered reading this one at Cabrillo park, maybe during someone else's soccer practice, but not much else about it. And maybe with good reason. The Pilgrims are kind of boring. Slightly less since I learned that I was a direct descendant of William Bradford, but still. This one had a sweet narrative, but reminded me of something my creative writing teacher told me when I brought a journal-story to class--not all of it felt enough like a journal. I suppose that Pilgrims being as boring as they were, Mem wouldn't have much else to write about than the historical and political events going on around her, but perhaps I can't fault Lasky too much for that, since the goal of the books is to teach the history. I'm still looking more forward to the Oregon Trail and Polish immigrant diaries, but glad I could start in Plymouth.