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A review by sprinklesugarbunbun
A Journey to the New World: The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple, Mayflower, 1620 by Kathryn Lasky
2.0
Read for museum research project.
It was pretty hard for me to get through. I think it's because I am 24 and this is written for middle-grade. However, I've had to read some middle-grade in college when I had been (stupidly) pursuing early childhood education (phew, I lucked out of that nightmare just in time), and some of the books we were assigned were written so well that you didn't notice the youthfulness of the book too much. It wasn't a grueling process to finish, unlike this book (which had, surprisingly, been recommended to me by museum peers).
One moment sticks out to me--something that bothered me. The character, Remember, wastes almost two pages of her 'diary' writing that she's bored. Bored, bored, so bored, oh so bored. Yes, the journey from Holland to Massachusetts would have been very trying for a young girl, and perhaps Lasky was trying to capture child-like thoughts, but it seemed really (for lack of a better word) BORING to come across Remember's boredom. She could have described more of her setting or used other characters as a means of story; Lasky already started to, by pulling in the Billington brothers.
I wouldn't recommend this to children wanting to read and empathize with a Pilgrim child. Not only was the writing tedious and jarring, but some of the information left me scratching my head, wondering if she used certain terms because it'd be easier for children to understand or that she didn't actually know the history and terminology as well as she should. Although this story takes place in the Mayflower, by Provincetown, and in Plymouth, I never felt grounded with the character. Everything, and even everyone, was written with a vagueness, as if you could sort of get a hazy sense of the seventeenth century world Remember lived in (who wasn't even an actual Pilgrim child on the ship) but not the full picture.
It was pretty hard for me to get through. I think it's because I am 24 and this is written for middle-grade. However, I've had to read some middle-grade in college when I had been (stupidly) pursuing early childhood education (phew, I lucked out of that nightmare just in time), and some of the books we were assigned were written so well that you didn't notice the youthfulness of the book too much. It wasn't a grueling process to finish, unlike this book (which had, surprisingly, been recommended to me by museum peers).
One moment sticks out to me--something that bothered me. The character, Remember, wastes almost two pages of her 'diary' writing that she's bored. Bored, bored, so bored, oh so bored. Yes, the journey from Holland to Massachusetts would have been very trying for a young girl, and perhaps Lasky was trying to capture child-like thoughts, but it seemed really (for lack of a better word) BORING to come across Remember's boredom. She could have described more of her setting or used other characters as a means of story; Lasky already started to, by pulling in the Billington brothers.
I wouldn't recommend this to children wanting to read and empathize with a Pilgrim child. Not only was the writing tedious and jarring, but some of the information left me scratching my head, wondering if she used certain terms because it'd be easier for children to understand or that she didn't actually know the history and terminology as well as she should. Although this story takes place in the Mayflower, by Provincetown, and in Plymouth, I never felt grounded with the character. Everything, and even everyone, was written with a vagueness, as if you could sort of get a hazy sense of the seventeenth century world Remember lived in (who wasn't even an actual Pilgrim child on the ship) but not the full picture.