The diary of Sarah Nita, a thirteen-year old Navajo girl, which describes the Navajos' forced 400-mile walk from their ancestral homeland to Fort Sumner in 1864.

: I read this as an adult last year, and was delighted at how swept back in time I felt. These books tend to have writing styles I really connect with. I grew up with this series, I'd say. This year, though, a month ago, I read "A Broken Flute," edited by Doris Seale. It's a critique of portrayals of Native Americans in childrens' media, and this book was one of the many examined. The review pointed out that this book is in no way historically accurate, and detailed why. I was stunned, ashamed I didn't know, and I so readily believed historical fiction without doing research of my own. This book takes place during an event that has negative effects to this day, and still hurts a lot of people. The author should have done far, far more research in order to portray such with the sensitivity it deserved. Better yet, this should have been written by someone of the community. This book, even last year, was one I planned to read only once. If I find out the Mary Driscoll one was also historically inaccurate, or the Oregon Trail one, I will be even sadder and more ashamed. Those were my two favorites, but I like nearly two dozen others. I'm doing a reread of the ones I liked, and will do more research on those time periods so I can know what really happened. ( )

Sarah Nita's diary, gives the reader a view of how hard reality was for those who had to follow the path of the Long Walk. This is a great read for middle school students because it talks about more mature ideas but it's still important to be able to understand other's backgrounds without being biased. ( )

Presented as a grandmother telling her granddaughter the story of her life, this book gives us a peek at the lifeways of the Navajo while also presenting the truth of the suffering they endured from the political decisions made in distant Washington DC. Of course, Sarah Nita has no idea of the reasons why the Army was rounding up her people, nor why they were made to walk for months in mid-winter. We read her thoughts, her attention to her younger sister, her knowledge of how to survive when they walked on their own to find relatives, her yearning for her mother, the care given the two girls by another Navajo family, how supportive of each other the walkers were.
The writing was a pleasure to read. Simple sentences carrying profound thoughts, revealing important events in our country's history.
I read this aloud to my blind son and he remembers and talks about Sarah Nita and her dog Silver Cloud.
black & white photos at the end of the book show us Navajo of that era and the landscape where they lived. ( )

I don't remember much of these books as individual books, but I remember reading them all as a young, avid reader. I think that ultimately these books are the reason why I love historical fiction novels so much. They all did such a great job of taking me to a different time and place and making it come alive, seeing the world through an older, historical lens. I highly recommend any of the Dear America books to younger readers who love history and need to get hooked on reading! ( )