I try to read all the award winning books, including the runners up. This is a story of an interesting slice of America. The setting is in the upper West Coast, among the Finnish immigrant community during the early 1900s

I was kind of bored with this one. Not a lot of plot, just sporadic story telling.

Listened to this aloud with my kids. There were some hard topics in it: descriptions of suicide, murder, kidnap, and various forms of death on the frontier. I was not prepared for these things that just showed up in the story without warning. I wish I had been reading aloud. We almost gave up on the book. The saving grace was the truth of it.

Fun in that Laura Ingalls Wilder frontier sense--which means you can be appalled by how hard everyday life was and, at the same time, be delighted by how simple everyday life was. It's a mixed bag of adventure and tragedy, with no great drama other than the characters surviving and getting along okay.

May Amelia is a tomboy, a troublemaker, and a plucky youngster with adorable speech patterns. She's the only girl in her small Finnish community in southwestern Washington. She struggles with loneliness and constant disapproval from her brothers, father and grandmother for not being "a proper young lady."

Some notes: A woman is murdered kind of gruesomely. The word "chinaman" is used a lot, which I'm sure is historically accurate, but might be offensive.

Uma bela narrativa de aventuras, de amor, e de relações familiares. Muito bom.

Whoa, I did NOT expect as many emotional gut punches in this historical fiction! There were some laughs, some tears, some white knuckled action, and of course, the rambunctious girl narrator with a passel of brothers.

Pros
-Immigrant perspectives in the Northwest, mostly Finnish characters, some Chinese
-Real consequences of some historically not great stuff - effects of prejudice, poverty, lack of education, people actually die from serious diseases.
-Even with a whole bunch of brothers, some with similar sounding names, and a couple of aunts, the characterization was strong enough that I could tell them all apart (even though the audio book narrator didn't quite change her voice for each of them).

Cons
-May be a little Real-Tell It Like Is (what with the deaths, poverty, cruelty) for some gentler soul kids
-Chinese immigrant prejudice may be a little intense for some kids; I would have liked our narrator to be even more clear in her "he's just like me!" revelations
-Tiniest plot confusion I might have missed - Savannah the doll was broken into pieces, and then many chapters later, was whole and could wear outfits again?

Best For
-Those emotionally more mature, but decoding at grade level readers (upper middle grade, 6-7th)
-Kids who liked Penny from Heaven, or are almost ready for Hattie Big Sky

The perfect book of historical fiction
Pulled my hearts strings on adventures and heart aches

May Amelia is certainly a very lively character. She chafes against the restrictions placed on girls and loves to go boating, climb trees, and run. I liked reading about the relationship she has with her brothers, especially Wendell and Wilbert.

I also liked reading about the area. Coastal Washington is a new area for me.

What I didn't like so much was that the misfortunes in the second half of the book seemed to come so quickly and furiously. They made the book less plausible.