May Amelia is the only girl in her family with six brothers and a live in cousin. For that matter she is the only girl in Nasel, where she and her Finnish family live. Naturally May Amelia want the baby in her mama's stomach to be a girl. When her sister Amy Alice is born tragedy strikes and May Amelia feels it is all her fault. After spending some time in the city with her aunt and uncle, May realizes she needs to go back to her family.
I completely understand why this book won a Newberry Honor. The story feels like it transcends time. I really felt like I knew how May Amelia and I commiserated with her losses and celebrated her successes. This story does a great job of showing all the historically relevant challenges of the time, the social classes, the immigration and assimilation of cultures. I also loved the way she dealt with family and finding your place in a family.

Despite the style of writing that was distracting at times (I often had to reread because I couldn't tell if someone was speaking or not due to the lack of quotation marks), I enjoyed the stories of May Amelia. At turns, it was funny, sweet and heartbreaking.

My mom's been married a few times now, and I can honestly say that not much good has come out of the multiple stepfathers I've dealt with. There is one notable exception: my first stepfather, when I was maybe 8 years old, randomly decided to give my sister and I a present each. He put his hands behind his back and told us to each pick a side, and then presented us each with our own book. My sister got "Because of Winn Dixie" and I got this book.

I remember being disappointed at first, because I had heard about "Because of Winn Dixie" and had never heard of this May Amelia character. Plus, the book wasn't pretty. Also, I had wanted to pick the other hand but the older sister got first call. Needless to say I didn't enter this book with any positive expectations.

I guess it goes without saying that I loved it, if I remember it all these years later as a favorite, so much so that I still have it on my elusive 'favorites' shelf ten years later at age 18.

The book is about a young girl who has grown up in a family of rambunctious brothers. She's unruly and rather wild, just goes about the riverside with her animal friends and her imagination to make a great day out of it. I remember the book felt rustic to me, that I was transported to this whole world that I, safely growing up in my upper-middle-class suburb, had no idea existed. And who knew that it could be so fun!

I might have been too young by conventional standards to read this at age 8 or so, so I'm not suggesting this as the prime reading age for any of my friends' and followers' children. But my gosh, please don't forget about this book. In 2000 it didn't win the Newbery Medal but it did win Honors, and it deserved every bit of recognition it got.

A good historical fiction book that was more enjoyable for me as it was set in Washington state where I live. At times the narrative style was not engaging for me. Should be a fun read for anyone over the age of ten who wants to know how different it was to live in the late 1800s.

This is an interesting story of a young girl's life on the Oregon frontier. The setting is Astoria, and I found all the Oregonian history really interesting. Some of the themes may have gone over my 7-year-old's head, and I'd probably recommend it for kids closer to 9 or so, but still good.

Being a tomboy myself, I enjoyed the character of May Amelia Jackson. I also liked Holm's depiction of pioneer life in the Pacific Northwest. Even though this particular book is fiction, she did research for it, and the hardships and lifestyle depicted are good reminders that kids back then had to grow up fast.