History Literature / DearAmerica

''Dear America'' is a [[MiddleGradeLiterature middle grade]] series of HistoricalFiction novels published by Scholastic. The books are written to resemble diaries by the young girl protagonists that are keeping as they go through their life events during various events in American History, ranging from as early as the voyage of the ''Mayflower'' to as "recent" as UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar. Books are written so as to appear real, complete with WhereAreTheyNow Epilogues and the author and book data not printed on the front covers.

** In ''My Face to the Wind'' Mr. Gaddis agrees to outfit Sarah Jane's new schoolhouse properly [[spoiler: after she guides a group of students to safety in a blizzard.]]

''Dear America'' is a [[MiddleGradeLiterature middle grade]] series of historical novels for girls published by Scholastic. The series was originally canceled in 2004 after its thirty-sixth book but was relaunched in September 2010 with a new book and re-releases of three older books. Since the relaunch three new titles (one being a sequel) have come out and some of the older books have gotten new re-releases.

There were also versions produced by several of Scholastic's international branches (see ''Literature/DearCanada''), and an HBO miniseries.

Each book is written in the form of a diary of a young woman's life during an important event or time period in American history, ranging from as early as the voyage of the ''Mayflower'' to as recent as UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar.

!!Provides Examples Of:

** Remember Whipple (Mem)

** Mem calls her friend Humility Sawyer "Hummy."

** The Star Points in ''My Secret War'', they are made up of vapid girls who only care about being pretty and stylish. They get better as the book goes on.

* AnnoyingYoungerSibling: Green from ''A Line in the Sand'' spends half of his time mouthing off.
** Other examples include Teresa's sister Netta from ''West to a Land of Plenty''[[spoiler: until she dies]], Grace's sister Ruth from ''Survival in the Storm''[[spoiler: until her friend's death]], Libby's brother Joe from ''The Great Railroad Race'', and Polly's half sister Laura in ''Land of the Buffalo Bones''. Chances are, if the main character has a younger sibling older than an infant, they are going to be this. (If she has multiple younger siblings, it may not be all of them, but there will be at least one.)
*** Chances are also that something is going to happen to make her realize her sibling is more important than she wanted to admit. Teresa [[spoiler: loses Netta]], Grace and Ruth spend several days trapped in an abandoned house [[spoiler: and then Grace has to watch Ruth handle the death of her best friend]], and Laura, having ruined Polly's painting paper, makes a Christmas wish for Polly to get more paper rather than wishing for something for herself.

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Molly Flaherty gives her uncle one in ''Where Have all the Flowers Gone.'' Upon hearing him make remarks against blacks at a New Year's Eve party, she asks, alluding to his career as a fireman, what color the two little kids he recently saved from a burning apartment were. He replies they were black, so Molly asks, "If you had known that before, would you have gone in there?"

* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: The protagonist of ''Hear My Sorrow'' witnesses the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which dozens of workers trapped on the blazing factory floor, [[spoiler:including Angela's cousin Rosa,]] jump to their deaths rather than face the more painful death that awaits them in the fire. (This is very much TruthInTelevision: the Triangle fire was a real event, and the book's depiction is remarkably accurate.)
** ''Dreams of the Golden Country'' features a similar, though entirely fictional, event based on the real-life Triangle fire.

* BigScrewedUpFamily: The Sumps in ''A City Tossed And Broken''. Mr. Sump is involved in illegal activity, Mrs. Sump is selfish, racist, verbally and emotionally abusive to their daughter and only cares about her social status, and while Lily, unlike her parents, seems to have a good heart, she is depressed, emotionally repressed, and naive to the point where [[spoiler:she becomes the target of a con artist, who pretended to fall in love with her in order to extort money from her father. At least she dies before she learns the truth.]]

* BreakTheHaughty: This happens to [[spoiler:former AlphaBitch Sadie [=McCall=] from ''Survival in the Storm''. Her family loses most of their money to the Dalhart Bank, and they move to California in hopes of buying a fruit or vegetable farm with their cash savings. But once they're in California, her father abandons her and her mother and sisters at a roadside cafe. They end up in the same migrant camp as Helen Walker, her old enemy. Things don't get much better: they frequently don't even have enough to eat, Sadie has to drop out of school to work, she and her mother are harassed by the farm owners because they're clearly new to working for a living, and her hair has to be shaved off because she gets lice. But she and Helen make up, and later gains Grace's forgiveness.]]
* BuriedAlive: What may have happened to [[spoiler:Nannie's best friend Pretty Eagle]] in ''My Heart Is On the Ground''.
** ''A Coal Miner's Bride'' has several instances of men being killed in mine shaft collapses. [[spoiler:Including Anetka's husband Stanley.]]
* ButNotTooWhite: Hince of ''A Picture of Freedom'' is described as light-skinned, having "grayish-lookin' cat eyes" and "curly, sandy hair", and Spicy uses it to insult him when he teases her for her name by calling him a "half-white dog" (which greatly hurts him). Clotee ponders on this because Hince's father is unknown and rumored to be a white man, and could possibly be their own plantation master Henley. They later take advantage of it, by [[spoiler: forging papers saying Spicy, dressed in mens' clothing, has been sold to "Hince Henley," and running away by passing as a white man and his slave]].
* CassandraTruth: Hattie in ''Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie'' tries to tell her aunt and mom that Mrs. Kenker, the outwardly sweet old lady in their wagon train, is a thief, but out of stress and deference, they don't listen.

* ContinuityNod: The narrator of ''Seeds of Hope'' talks about going to live in Oregon City with their aunt Augusta, uncle Charles and cousins Hattie, Bennie, and Jake Campbell who had traveled out to Oregon by wagon from Missouri. (AKA the family of the narrator from ''Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie''. Both books were written by Kristiana Gregory.)

* CoolBigSis: the main characters show elements of this if they have younger siblings, and their older sisters are this as well.

** Teresa Viscardi's Mrs. Curran
** Bess Brennan's Ms. Salinger (who offers to write the diary entries for her while she is learning Braille, because Bess is blind)

** Believe it or not, Nannie Little Rose of ''My Heart is on the Ground'' has one at her BoardingSchoolOfHorrors. It's head teacher Mrs. Campbell, who is compassionate toward her students and does not look down on their heritage--at least, not as actively as the other teachers. Sewing teacher Mrs. Monk arguably becomes this, especially after [[spoiler: the death of Little Rose's best friend Pretty Eagle.]]

* CoolUncle: Several girls have these, and/or a [[CoolUncle Cool Aunt]] who is usually younger and more "with it" than the parents. They include:
** All three of Nellie Lee and Erma Jean Love's uncles, Pace, Mitchell (Meece) and John Willis. Pace was Erma Jean's favorite until [[spoiler: he was tragically killed.]] Meece is cool by virtue of his job--he owns a Chicago club. John Willis is developmentally disabled but still cool because he plays with his nieces and is able to listen to their problems and respond compassionately.
*** The girls also have a cool Aunt Beth Annie (Thanne) who is an extroverted flapper--a big deal for a conservative family from Tennessee.

** Also averted in ''Like The Willow Tree'' with Lydia's Aunt Sarah, who complains about everything and shows no sympathy to Lydia and Daniel about the deaths of their parents and baby sister.

* DarkerAndEdgier: Than many children's historical fiction, with its willingness to show many forms of death, violence, racism and bigotry.
** Within the series itself ''A Coal Miner's Bride'', ''One Eye Laughing, The Other Weeping'', ''So Far From Home'' and ''When Will This Cruel War Be Over?'' are considered the darkest in the series.
* DeadGuyJunior: The epilogues of many books reveal that the narrator named some or all of her children after dead relatives or friends.
** In ''Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie'', one of the twins born near the end of the journey to Oregon is named after [[spoiler:Mrs. Bigg]], who drowned a few days earlier during a river crossing.
* DeathByChildbirth: The fate of Julie's Cousin Eva in ''One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping''.

** ''A Picture of Freedom'' mentioned that Wook, Clotee's best friend, drowned along with her parents and her infant brother when their boat overturned during an attempt to escape. When Clotee learns that the owners sometimes lie about slaves dying while escaping to discourage other escapes, she hopes Wook and her family are one such case, but Mr. Harms tells her no, their deaths were sadly real.

** When there's news of a factory fire in ''Dreams in the Golden Country'', Zipporah's mother panics, thinking it's her older daughter Tovah's workplace. Luckily, it isn't. [[spoiler: But it's Mamie's....and she doesn't make it out alive.]] [[spoiler: Zipporah's newborn baby brother also dies just a few days after his premature birth]], and a neighbor's young son dies too.
** In ''My Heart is On the Ground'', [[spoiler: Nannie's best friend Lucy Pretty Eagle]] apparently dies of natural causes, but it's implied that [[spoiler: she was really in a deep self-induced trance, mistakenly presumed dead, and BuriedAlive.]] [[note]] Lucy Pretty Eagle was a real Sioux girl who died at the Carlisle Indian School, but the story of her being BuriedAlive is just an urban legend, usually paired with the claim that her ghost haunts the grounds. [[/note]]
* DeceasedParentsAreTheBest: Sophie, the late wife of Stanley and the mother of Violet, Lily and Rose in ''A Coal Miner's Bride'', is remembered fondly by her husband and children. It actually becomes a problem for Anetka, as both Stanley and oldest daughter Violet (who naturally remembers her mother more than her sisters do) are reluctant to fully accept Anetka because she's not Sophie. Violet gets better with time, but it's not until Anetka gives Stanley a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech that he starts trying to be a better husband to her.

* DisabledMeansHelpless: Averted in ''Mirror, Mirror on the Wall''. Protagonist Bess Brennan has recently gone blind, and so her parents send her to the Perkins School for the Blind in nearby Boston. There, the focus is teaching Bess to cope with blindness in everyday life and educate herself so she can have a meaningful life.

* DisappearedDad: In ''Mirror, Mirror on the Wall'', Bess and Elin's father is mentioned to have died some years earlier.

* DramaticTVShutOff: In ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone?'', set during the Vietnam War, Brenda switches off the TV immediately when the news comes on. Her sister Molly questions it, and Brenda says that with their brother Patrick stationed in Vietnam for nearly a year longer, if they focus too much on the war they'll make themselves crazy.

* DownerEnding: Some of the epilogues end with this, especially the book ''So Far From Home'', where in the epilogue it is stated that main character dies two years later of cholera.

* DumbStruck: In ''Color Me Dark'', Nellie's sister Erma Jean becomes mute after the death of her favorite uncle; it's later revealed that this is largely due to the fact that before he died, he revealed to Erma Jean that his injuries were sustained in a racially-motivated attack, and the story combined with his subsequent death traumatized her into silence. Erma Jean only regains her voice when she fears her father is about to meet the same fate, as her desperation to prevent this finally breaks through the wall created by the earlier trauma so that she can scream for him to stay home.

* FamilyThemeNaming: The Anderson family from ''Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie'' named their first five daughters after trees: Hazel, Holly, Laurel, Olive, and Cassia. They break the trend with their sixth daughter, Eliza May, who is named after the ship that takes the family on the first leg of their journey (see NamedAfterSomebodyFamous).
** In ''A Coal Miner's Bride'', when Anetka meets her three step-daughters-to-be-- Violet, Lily, and Rose-- she is so taken aback that all she can think to say is 'what a beautiful garden'.
* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: The ''Dear America'' series is chock full of FamilyUnfriendlyDeath accurate to the time period of each book. For example, the death of the protagonist's love interest in the Titanic diary, and, more traumatically, the multiple deaths that occur along the journey of a girl taking a wagon train out west (including one death from being swept away while crossing a river, and one brutal DeathOfAChild when the protagonist mistakes water hemlock for an edible root and feeds a bit to another young girl while preparing dinner).

* FieryRedhead: The main character of ''A Coal Miner's Bride: The Diary of Anetka Kaminska'' complains about everything about her looks except her red hair. At one point she suddenly remembered that she was her mother's fiery redhead and started yelling at her ungrateful husband with a list of all the things she does for him.
** Anetka's mother had red hair when she was alive and was a spirted woman who was willing to stand up for herself. It's implied she encouraged Anetka to speak up and learn the (illegal) Polish language.
** Also Lucinda Lawrence from ''A Line in the Sand'' with her Mother, they both have red hair and very strong personalities.

* FirstGirlWins: Gender-flipped, with roughly half of the protagonists who begins a romance in the story eventually marrying that guy. Examples include Walter for Rosa in ''Valley of the Moon'', Johnny for Maddie in ''My Secret War'', Willie for Abby in ''Cannons at Dawn'', Jake for Minnie in ''A City Tossed and Broken'', David for Grace in ''Survival in the Storm'', Yitzy for Zipporah in ''Dreams in the Golden Country'', Antoine for Angeline in ''Behind the Masks'', Tally for Emma in ''When Will This Cruel War Be Over?'', Pete for Libby in ''The Great Railroad Race'', and (eventually) Leon for Anetka in ''A Coal Miner's Bride''.
** A heartbreaking variation plays out in ''Standing in the Light''. Caty falls in love with Snow Hunter but [[spoiler:after she and Thomas are dragged back to their English life]], she never sees him again. The epilogue states that Caty never married, and while it's never explicitly said, the last few entries in the diary implied that the reason for this is that after losing Snow Hunter, she could never love anyone else.

** Also subverted for Piper and Bud in ''The Fences Between Us''. They're dating in the first act and set up to go down that path, but right before the second act, they break up. Piper marries a man she meets in college in the epilogue.
*** Piper actually gets ''another'' aversion of a sort; after she breaks up with Bud, the book teases a potential relationship between her and her friend Betty's brother, but the epilogue reveals that [[spoiler:Betty's brother was killed in World War II.]]

* FirstPersonSmartass: Patsy from ''I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly'' is kind and helpful, but she will occasionally slip into this when talking about people she dislikes.
-->''James is still taking care of Master. Does everything for him. When Master catch a cold, James be the one who sneeze.''

* FriendToAllLivingThings: Cinda's brother, Lem, from ''A Line in the Sand'' has a pet raccoon, tries to take in a wounded raven, and is repeatedly noted as loving animals. He becomes a veterinarian in the epilogue.

* FromBadToWorse: '''Nothing''' goes right for the residents of New Yeovil/Hawley in ''Land of the Buffalo Bones''. They go through: a long train ride, snow in spring, being conned into believing that there's a fully formed town when there isn't (and that their leader knew but lied to them), several of their number leaving for a bigger town, having to drain the land in order to build anything, one of their number killing themselves, difficultly planting in a new land, culture shock, [[spoiler: grasshoppers, a teenage girl eloping with a Native American]], blizzards, illegal alcohol, starvation, an economic downturn and a leader who is ill equipped for these situations. It's a ''miracle'' they didn't go insane!

* TheGreatDepression: ''Christmas After All'', ''Survival in the Storm'', and ''One Eye Laughing, The Other Weeping''.
* HappilyAdopted: [[spoiler: Florrie's adopted baby sister Cinnamaron]] in ''All the Stars in the Sky''.

* HatedByAll: In ''Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie'', Mrs. Kenker is shunned and ignored by virtually everyone in the wagon train after her mass thefts of everyone's belongings come to light. [[spoiler:When she shows up at the Christmas dinner held by Hattie's family for everyone who was in the train to Oregon, she's still a loner whom nobody talks to except, eventually, Hattie.]]

* HistoricalVillainDowngrade: A very obvious example of a whole group being downgraded is in ''My Heart is on the Ground'' by Ann Rinaldi, which positions Carlisle School and its staff as well-intentioned and generally kind if misguided missionaries. This was understandably not taken well by those familiar with the reality.[[note]]For example, when Nannie and her friends are caught speaking Lakota, their punishment is to not be allowed to close their bedroom door and having another student spy on them to catch them if they do it again -- while being forbidden from speaking their native language is problematic in and of itself, the punishment for doing so in real life would have been a lot worse than a loss of privacy.[[/note]]

* IllegalGuardian: ''Down the Rabbit Hole'', Pringle Duncan's aunt and uncle move into Pringle's (very grand and expensive) home after her parents are killed in an accident, ostensibly to care for Pringle and her brother, but they treat the Duncan siblings so badly that they run away shortly thereafter. The epilogue states that Pringle returned at the age of 21 to reclaim her home and her inheritance from her shocked aunt, who had believed that Pringle and Gideon were gone for good and so she would get what was rightfully theirs.
** Although they are not guardians in the traditional sense, the slave owners in Clotee and Patsy's stories are this in a way since they dictate the lives of their slaves.
*** The Henleys of Clotee's book don't beat ''her'', but "Mas' Henley" did sell Clotee's mother to another plantation purely to spite his wife. He later murders Clotee's Uncle Heb, who cared for her like a daughter in her stead (he swears it wasn't intentional, but he was still unnecessarily rough with the man over an incident that wasn't his fault), and then banishes Heb's wife Tee, who had been the cook, to the fields because he's afraid she'll poison him. Meanwhile, "Miz Lilly", Henley's aforementioned wife, tries to emotionally manipulate Clotee by reminding her of how she and her mother were 'best friends' and get her to tattle on the field slaves.
*** The Davises, Patsy's owners, are not at all loved by Patsy, but after Sir's death, she figures that he wasn't the worst slave owner. He never said a kind word to her, but he didn't whip her, either. Ma'am, on the other hand, complimented her once.

* JustFriends: Madeline Beck of ''My Secret War'' has her friend Clara think she is in love with a boy she has started a club with named Johnny, although Maddie refuses to believe it, thinking she is JustFriends with him.
** [[spoiler: The epilogue totally averts this. As an adult, Maddie gets back in touch with Johnny after high school...and yes, they get together.]]
* TheKindnapper: Caty and Thomas in ''Standing In The Light'' are kidnapped by the Lenape Native American tribe. Caty expects that she and Thomas will be hurt or tortured by them, but they're actually adopted by parents who had lost their own children and are treated as family. By the end of the story, Caty and Thomas are devastated to be taken away from them, and spend the rest of their lives trying unsuccessfully to find out what happened to their Lenape "family".
* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: In ''Christmas After All'', Minnie comments that she'd like to read diaries of "unfamous Americans", or ordinary kids who lived through historical events like the American Revolution and Civil War, which is the whole premise of the ''Dear America'' and ''My Name is America'' series.

* LoopholeAbuse: Attempted by the Prettyman school staff in ''With The Might Of Angels'': They let Dawnie into the school, but they make her sit outside the principal's office instead of attending class. That way, she's in the building but kept away from the other kids. It doesn't last long, as it's quickly clarified for them that the law does in fact require them to put Dawnie in classes.

* MarriageOfConvenience: Mem Trembley and Darcy Cooper's marriage in ''I Walk in Dread'' has elements of this. Mem will benefit because Darcy's family has good money and the marriage will get her out of Salem and away from the WitchHunt, and the Coopers will benefit because Mem is a good cook and, with oldest son Darcy married off, next son Adam will be free to marry his sweetheart. Darcy clearly loves Mem, as well; Mem is less attracted.

* MassiveNumberedSiblings: Minnie Swift of ''Christmas After All'' has three sisters and a brother, and gains an adopted sister when Willie Faye is sent to live with her family.

* MeaningfulRename: In ''A Picture of Freedom'', Spicy tells Clotee that her mother wanted to name her Rose, but her master wouldn't let her. When Spicy and Hince run away near the end of the book, Spicy, at Clotee's suggestion, begins going by Rose to show that she's no longer bound by an owner's directives.

* MissingMom: Piper's mother in ''The Fences Between Us'', the closest adult female figures are her sister Margie and the family housekeeper. The ladies of her father's congregation often served as her mother figures as well, and it's one of the reasons why the discrimination against them upsets Piper.

* NamedAfterSomebodyFamous: A variant in ''Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie.'' Protagonist Hattie Campbell and her family travel with the Andersons, who have a baby aboard the steamboat ''Eliza May'' on the first leg of the journey. Since the baby is a girl, guess what they name her?
* NearRapeExperience: In ''The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow,'' the book comes as close as they can in a book aimed at preteens to implying that one of the soldiers was going to do this to Sarah Nita after she was caught trying to raid corn out of animals' manure at Fort Sumner. He's all of a sudden distracted by the soldier Sarah Nita refers to as "Mica Eyes" calling him out to a different area of the animal pens.

* NobleSavage: Books set in TheWildWest or the New World often uses this trope.
* ObfuscatingStupidity: In ''I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly''. Patsy has a bad stutter and can't always speak as fluently as she'd like, so people think she's a dunce and don't expect much of her. Sometimes she plays it to her advantage, by pretending to be too stupid to leave the schoolroom after she's done cleaning it (so she can listen to the teacher and learn how to read and write) or pretending she thought it was Saturday when she skipped the white plantation owners' church services and went to worship with the other freedmen instead.
** Unfortunately, this also ends up working against Patsy at times. At one point, she tries to explain to other freed slaves that she can read and write, but they don't understand what she's trying to say. She finally gets her point across by picking up a book and reading it.
* OrphanageOfLove: In ''Like The Willow Tree'', after Lydia and her brother lose their parents in the Spanish Flu epidemic and their aunt and uncle don't want them, they are sent to live with a religious order known as the Shakers that takes in orphaned children. While they have a few unusual rules (related to their particular religious beliefs) that can make adjustment difficult, such as strict restrictions on personal possessions, it's clear that the Shakers care very much for the children and want them to be happy. At one point, when one of the girls asks their main caregiver Sister Jennie if she has any children, she replies that she does have children -- "[[ParentalSubstitute all of you]]".

* PassionateSportsGirl: The book ''With the Might of Angels'' has Dawnie who is teased for playing baseball but the joke's on the boys who tease her because she is proud of it.

* ParentalMarriageVeto: Jerzy and Lidia in ''A Coal Miner's Bride'' got one from Lidia's parents, who had [[ArrangedMarriage arranged her marriage]] with another man. They ran away and married anyway, and when her parents found out they disowned her.

** Zipporah's parents in ''Dreams in the Golden Country'' are shocked when [[spoiler: Miriam marries an Irish Catholic man named Sean, to the point where they disown her, pretend she's died and forbid Zipporah and Tovah to contact or see her. Zipporah refuses, and ends up finding her. But unlike the previous examples, the family reconciles in the end.]]

* PointOfView: All of the books are written in 1st person narration.
* PoliticallyCorrectHistory: ''My Face to the Wind,'' ''A Light in the Storm,'' ''Standing in the Light'', ''The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow'', and ''My Heart is on the Ground'' all have elements of this.

* RomanAClef: Usually it will recreate things that happened in history, only on a smaller scale and before the actual event happens.
* {{Retirony}}: In ''Hear My Sorrow'', Angela and Sarah are excited to hear that their friend Clara is engaged to a grocer, which will allow her to leave the sweatshop life to join the family business. Before this can happen, Clara dies in the Triangle fire.

* ScrapbookStory: Every book in the series is in a diary format.
** ''West to a Land of Plenty'' is particularly scrapbook-style, as narrator Theresa shares her diary with her younger sister, pastes in some documents, and copies in letters she writes.

* SadistTeacher: While thankfully not as common as the CoolTeacher, the ''Dear America'' books have a few. The most egregious are probably Mrs. Burton from ''Mirror Mirror on the Wall'' and Mrs. Caffrey, AKA Woman-Who-Screams-A-Lot from ''My Heart is on the Ground.'' Not to mention the majority of the Prettyman school staff in ''With The Might Of Angels.''
** The Minidoka camp social studies teacher from ''The Fences Between Us'' who decides to use the first anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack to needle each (Japanese American) student about whether it was right to relocate Japanese American citizens from the Pacific coast.

* SexyDiscretionShot: Anetka in ''A Coal Miner's Bride'', writing about her wedding night: "Some things are too private to write even in a diary of private thoughts, so all I will say is that I became a married woman, and it wasn't at all like I expected."
** Also happens with Abby and Willie in ''Cannons at Dawn''. While kisses and sleeping together with a bridal quilt are mentioned, Abby doesn't write them down. Thus, [[spoiler: the conception of their child]] is offscreen.

* ShoutOut: In ''Where Have All The Flowers Gone?'', Molly is a fan of both Music/TheDoors and Music/TheBeatles (especially Jim Morrison and Music/PaulMcCartney.)
** The title of that particular book is also a reference to a World War 1 poem.
* SiblingYinYang: Julie from ''One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping'' compares her late TrophyWife-esque mother and Actor Aunt Clara

* TheSixties: ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone?''

* StigmaticPregnancyEuphemism: Julie, in ''One Eye Laughing, The Other Weeping'', finds some letters from her Cousin Eva. She described having "a condition" and not being angry anymore. Later the housekeeper, Susie, tells Julie that Eva was seeing an older man who abandoned her after it turned out she was pregnant. Eva was sent out to a hotel for her pregnancy and it turned out she died giving birth to a baby that lived for only a few days.

* TeamMom: Sister Jennie is this to Lydia and the other young girls in ''Like The Willow Tree.''
* TeenPregnancy: [[spoiler:Abby in ''Cannons At Dawn''.]] But it's a subversion due to the era, as she is seen not as a teenager but as an adult woman and [[spoiler:married.]] It's still a shock, though.
* TinyGuyHugeGirl: Mr. and Mrs. Bigg from ''Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie'' are described as this (Mr. Big is a small, disabled man with two amputated legs; Mrs. Bigg is a massive and stout woman).
* TokenBlackFriend: In ''Look to the Hills'', the main character Zettie is a slave purchased and kept by a young woman's wealthy family to be a companion to her. While Zettie and her mistress have a genuinely close bond and care deeply for each other, it's clearly not a friendship between equals (which Zettie realizes, but her mistress does not).

** ''West To A Land Of Plenty'' and ''My Heart Is On The Ground'' have Teresa and Little Rose just write in their own imperfect English.

** Finally, ''Look to the Hills'' provides two brief explanatory notes invoking this trope, first that Zettie's diary is written in French, and later when she switches from French to English for the rest of the book.
* TraumaticHaircut: In ''The Winter of Red Snow'', Lucy has her hair cut short in order to sell her hair to a wigmaker (only for the money to [[AllForNothing end up being stolen]]), and when her parents find out, they shave off what's left of her hair and also forbid her from wearing a cap, meaning she has to choose between never going outside or showing her shaved head for the world to see. Lucy is so upset and humiliated that she runs away from home, [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone much to her parents' distress]]. Abby, the only person who knows where Lucy is, is torn about whether she should tell or not; she eventually decides that she won't tell Lucy's parents ''where'' she is, but will tell them that she knows Lucy is safe and will come home once her hair has grown back to a respectable length. Near the end of the story, Lucy finally tells her family where she's been staying -- with a family friend in, ironically, the same town where she initially sold her hair.

* TwentyMinutesIntoThePast: ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone?'' which takes place in 1968. While it was written 30 years after that, it's still kind of recent for the series.
* VictorianNovelDisease: Margaret's mother in ''Voyage Of The Great Titanic'' had consumption, later known as Tuberculosis. She had it under control until her husband died, forcing her to work in a sweatshop to support her kids. Then it worsened and she died.

* WhamLine: Many examples, but notable ones include:
** "She was seventeen." [[spoiler: That was the age that Mary Driscoll, the protagonist of ''So Far From Home'' dies of cholera. Meaning that everything she went through was meaningless in the end.]]
** "I have not written for eight days. What could I write? Father is dead. Mother is dead. My baby sister, Lucy, is dead," from ''Like The Willow Tree''. Completely changes the plot from a SliceOfLife story in the 1910's to an OrphansOrdeal plot.
* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: Each book ends with an epilogue, explaining what happens to the character, her family and her friends (when applicable) after the book ends.
* TheWildWest: ''The Great Railroad Race'', ''West To a Land of Plenty'', ''Seeds of Hope'', ''Behind the Masks''

* WickedStepmother: Stanley's eldest daughter Violet seems to think Anetka is this in ''A Coal Miner's Bride.'' She later grows to love her, though.

* WouldHurtAChild: ''My Secret War'' had Maddie coming upon Nazi saboteurs on the beach and later being stalked by them, a car even tried to run her over!
* YouAreWhatYouHate: In ''One Eye Laughing, The Other Weeping'', Julie's Uncle Daniel gets into an argument with Julie's father, during the course of which he actually defends Hitler and claims that Vienna is, in fact getting overrun by Jews. When it's implied that her father reminded him that he's Jewish himself by birth (though he had since converted to Lutheranism), his response is that "I'm not Jewish. I haven't been for 20 years."

** ''A Picture of Freedom'' mentioned that Wook, Clotee's best friend, drowned along with her parents and her infant brother when their boat overturned during an attempt to escape. When Clotee learns that the owners sometimes lie about slaves dying while escaping to discourage other escapes, she hopes Wook and her family are one such case, but Mr. Harms tells her they are not.

** Likewise with ''[[https://web.archive.org/web/20010423134009/http://www.oyate.org/books-to-avoid/theChased.html The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow: The Diary of Sarah Nita, a Navajo Girl]]''. The book is framed as being dictated from Sarah Nita--who lived through the Long Walk of the Navajo--to her granddaughter, who is writing the story down to make a record of it. However, a child hearing any story would sit and listen respectfully rather than make notes or dictation--and given the topic, would not be made to listen to the story alone with no one else around to support her--and many Elders didn't speak on the tragedy at all because of the severe trauma it gave them. Sarah wouldn't have called herself "Navajo" and instead used "Dinè". The American soldiers are [[HistoricalVillainDowngrade overall made to appear kind]] and only doing their jobs (with only a few mentions of some "mean" ones who "abuse women" and some passing mentions of people being shot), and the reason for the move is cited as the Natives doing so much raiding that they had to be moved away. Finally, Sarah is renamed "The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow" because she spends their ''death march'' trying to keep spirits up and cheerful with stories she makes up on the spot. Like ''My Heart Is On The Ground'', this book was left out in the rerelease.

* AdoptionConflict: I Thought My Soul Would Rise And Fly, freed slave Nancy (Patsy's fellow house servant) has spent most of her life as the personal servant of Mrs. Davis. When Mary Ella, Nancy's mother, is freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, she makes her way to the Davis plantation to get her daughter. Mrs. Davis (more out of her own self-interests than love for Nancy) refuses to release her, while Nancy (who's been gaslighted into being loyal to the Davises) refuses to go. The issue is taken to court, where the magistrate rules in favor of the Davises, stating that, even with the Proclamation freeing the slaves, Nancy is a "bound servant" until she turns eighteen. Nancy is initially happy about this until [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech Patsy calls her an idiot to her face.]]

** In ''Survival in the Storm'', Grace volunteers at a hospital and at one point is sitting at the bedside of an old woman who begins recounting the birth of her frail baby son, who she refers to as "baby Jimmy". Hearing the story, Grace believes that the woman is going to tell her that the baby died, only for her to instead say that she supposes he's not really "baby Jimmy" anymore, as he had recently celebrated his seventy-fourth birthday. Grace is so surprised she can't even figure out how to respond, and it takes an effort for her not to start giggling.