Titel ... Gut

The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish by Claudia Mills

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Keeping in mind that this is a children's book, this is a fairly sophisticated story.  Amanda's parents are splitting up (in a way that makes the mother at first look blameworthy) and her distress is paralleled by the class project: keeping a Civil War diary for Polly, a fictional girl her age who has one brother who supports the Union cause and another who supports Secession.  This is a careful distinction.  The younger brother does not necessarily support slavery, but does support the right of slave-owning states to determine their own regulations in this matter.  The older brother, not Polly's favorite which adds to the complexity, is against slavery.  And they all live on one of those border states that couldn't make up its mind either: Maryland.


The story lightly touches on attitudes about race and Amanda shows the typical attitude of someone who wants to be right-thinking, but still struggles a bit with her preconceptions while deploring prejudice.  She also parallels the conflict with her own behavior when her pain over her parents' separation causes her to avoid her friend, yet want her friend to pursue her, and then blame her when she doesn't. 
The message: I'm rubber and you're glue, if we go back far enough we'll find the problem was you.  In her fictional diary, the brothers reconcile, as she does with her friend.  Unless her parents can agree on an open relationship, that marriage is doomed and it looks like serial monogamy for Dad.  And I don't believe for five seconds that her dad didn't start that relationship with Caroline until after the split and I bet Amanda's sister Steffi doesn't either, cynical little slut.

This book covers so much in so few pages.  Amanda is confronted with the gamut of button-pushing situations: parental conflict, separation, adultery, pubescent sibling with attitude, shame, math homework, leaden political correctness, bad weather, racism, and a lost cat!  I cried and cried.  All of this is deftly written so that it doesn't seem like a ham-handed pulling out of all the stops, but just like normal life.  Good job, Claudia Mills.



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