Meet Kit: An American Girl (American Girl: Kit #1) by Valerie Tripp

 

Summary (from the publisher): Kit's world turns upside down when Mother's friends come to stay with them and Dad loses his business. Will life ever be the same again?

Review: So much fun rereading Kit's book as an adult with my kids! I loved tomboy-ish Kit with her love for reading Robin Hood, baseball, and disdain for the bedroom her mother has made totally pink. I really love how she likes to write pretend newspaper articles in the summer and greets her father with them to read. Kit is facing very real obstacles in her life as the Great Depression slowly begins to have profound impacts on her daily life in this book. My kids have never read anything about that time period before, and this was such a great way to introduce that period in our history to them. 

I generally love the 'peak into the past' segment at the end of the American Girl books because they provide some real historical context and photographs to show what influenced the plot. However, this one attempted to explain the stock market crash and the cause of the Great Depression. This makes so much sense given the plot of the book! But it was still very much over the heads of my 4, 6, and even my 8-year-old. However, they did enjoy studying the pictures of shantytowns and people riding the rails from the Great Depression and had a lot of questions about the severity of the situation. 

Stars: 4

Related Titles: 



Comments

Popular Posts