another review? (not quite) for the rinaldi book

[beeb69]

first, i've read the excellent criticism of my heart is on the ground, but i haven't read the actual book yet.  i'm thinking the actual read will be more like a fast skim--i'll have too much distaste in my mouth with the critique in mind to give it a thorough read, alas.

second, some cursory searches for additional reviews pulled up this one from

Comments

[jill547fall08]

I read the Oyate critique before I read the book, and went into the book feeling as though all of the salient points had already been addressed. The book pretty much ties the points together into a story!

Also, although I knew that the Dear America books were fiction, and this point is addressed in the Oyate critique, I wasn't quite prepared for how very non-fiction-y the book's afterword was. It read exactly like the afterword of a nonfiction book, including an "explanation" of how the diary travelled from Nannie's hand to the present day. A fluent reader tends to learn to regard the afterword as "outside" the story, but in this case it was very much inside the story. And not even in an ironic or satirical way, the way Lemony Snicket, The Stinky Cheese Man, etc do. Do young readers tend to think of these afterwords as evidence that the books are nonfiction, or do they, too, recognize the inside-ness of them? (My anecdotal evidence suggests that some do the former and some the latter