One of my most absolute favourite things ever is when I get to discover new books that I missed as a kid! Granted, this one is because I did not grow up a child in the UK, but you know, details.

War Nurse: A Second World War Girl’s Diary, 1939-1940¸ Sue Reid.

I totally adored this book. It’s sweet and heart-wrenching, and I think oddly enough that spunky is the word I’d put to it. It totally personifies that can-do, chin-up spirit that is so thoroughly and irrevocably associated with the Brits of the Second World War, and it’s blended so beautifully with sadness that it feels very real. It’s a book about an older girl targeted at younger girls, which can be a pretty tricky task, but it’s done fairly well here!

Kitty, whose friends and family call her Kitten, is a member of the VAD—Voluntary Aid Detachment, or a sort of emergency nursing corps who have been instructed to turn up as soon as war is declared. And we waste no time getting there on the very first page! Her brother Peter is joining up with the army, and she’s off to the military hospital at Standhaven, and while she thinks she ought to feel noble and brave, she’s mostly just scared and homesick and lonely without her best friend. Her roommate introduces herself only as “Nurse Mason,” and seems to be very tidy and serious—unlike the other girls who Kit went to nursing school with, who are all jolly and friendly and excited. Ugh, you just know it’s going to be tragic and sad, isn’t it? Of course it is, no WWII stories end well.

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Welcome to 2017! Let’s start the year off with an excellent example of YA fiction that teaches without being preachy, and is a ball of fun to read as well, and will probably make you want to go drink some tea.

I never had one lick of the history of India in school, other than maybe a brief pass by the East India Trading Company, which is of course a tragedy, but reading books like this desperately makes me wish I had. Indian history is fascinating.

Jahanara: Princess of Princesses, India, 1627, Kathryn Lasky, 2002.

If you are like me and know very little Indian history, which is to my shame, Jahanara is the daughter of Mumtaz Mahal, the favourite wife of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal for Mumtaz. Jahanara lives at court with her mother and her father’s three other wives: Tali, who is Persian; Indira, who is Hindu, and Samina, who is only described as “sour;” along with the various children and eunuchs in the court. They observer purdah, which means that they do not go out in public and are not seen by men outside of the circle, and Jahanara, at fourteen, feels trapped.

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For a holiday week break, I thought I’d recap the Best and Worst of 2016! (Really, the best are just gushing, glowing reviews, and the worsts are nonstop castigations. But isn’t that more fun?)

Bests:

Quest for a Maid. A beautifully-told, engaging, thrilling story that truly does a little of everything. Drama, humour, family strife, romance, politics, natural disasters, you name it. All with fantastically evocative details and Scots words that never cross into twee or annoying. I can’t recommend this one enough.

These Are My Words. New this fall from Ruby Slipperjack, it’s heartbreaking and while it’s not a particularly plot-intensive book, its subject matter is so hard to get through that it’s cruel at times. Most of this story is told in subtext, rather than text, which I think makes it particularly good for both kids and adults. Wonderful and important.

Anacaona: Golden Flower. This book is like poetry. I know almost nothing about Haitian history and I still loved reading this book. It didn’t matter. It’s a fascinating story, wonderfully told, and sent me down a million joyful Wikipedia holes.

Graves of Ice. I realized that the I Am Canada books might really be worthwhile to read! This was far more thrilling than I gave it credit for, and I actually really did stay up late reading it because I couldn’t stand to put it down. I know I could have figured it out faster by reading the Wikipedia page for the Franklin expedition before I started, but hey. It was more exciting this way!

No Safe Harbour. I love this book. I loved it when I read it the first time and I love it more on every reread. It breaks my heart every time, but in a wonderful way. Just…read this one. Read them all, but read this one particularly.

Worsts:

Diana. Do I need to explain why the Sunfire books are here? Don’t ever date people who are rude to you! Don’t be a fickle, faithless jerk! Don’t have your books be finally resolved in the last twenty pages by “twists” that are actually ridiculous and stupid!

Megan. “1980s girl transported back in time, makes idiotic decisions, nearly gets killed and unfortunately isn’t.” Anachronism party.

The Fences Between Us. Oh good god. I loathed the very concept of this book—I hated the concept that the story of Japanese internment could be better told by a white girl. Why does this book even exist? Why did it get approved? Who wanted that? No. It’s not even a good story. It’s whiny and annoying and horrible.

Cassie. Seriously? Every single person in this book is either confusing or a total jerk. I hate them all and I wanted them all to have an unhappy ending. Except maybe for Cassie’s Indian fiancé, because she treated him terribly and he didn’t deserve that. I hope he found a better wife.

Grace of the Wild Rose Inn. Remember this one from way back in January? Let’s bring it back, because IT’S DREADFUL. In addition to the books being horribly written (every single one of them) and cartoony, this one has the terrible message of “If you don’t like your current fiancé, break up with him and marry his best friend three days later in front of all your friends and family.” None of this is a good idea. Doing that might be a worse idea than just marrying your shitty fiancé in the first place!

So what have we learned this year? That Dear Canada books are mostly great, and Sunfire books are mostly terrible! That I have very little patience for people making decisions that make zero sense given their time frame. That I expect authors of historical fiction to have more than a passing knowledge of the time period they’re writing about, or maybe have read more than a Time-Life book on the subject. That better books are written by authors who are emotionally invested in their work. And most of all: that 2016 was an excellent year for reading. Go forth and read more in 2016, and get back next week ready to read more recaps, reviews, and trash!

Happy New Year, YAHV readers! This blog is celebrating its one-year anniversary, and my URL has changed to yahistoricalvault.com–please update your bookmarks if necessary!

Thanks for reading, and I have a really great year of more young adult trash and treasures coming up for all of us!

This novel has everything a nerdy teenager could want: melodrama, love triangles, Nazis, sabotage, and large explosions.

Hindenburg 1937, Cameron Dokey, 1999. (And check out this cover: how’s that for your soft-focus love-triangle drama?)

Cameron Dokey was the author of those atrocious Hearts and Dreams books, and this one is very similar in tone. However, it is far more exciting and has significantly less sturm und drang about being “misunderstood,” though. It’s part of a “series” that are really just loosely connected books, the first one being that god-awful Louisiana Hurricane book from a few weeks ago, the next one being about an avalanche in Colorado, and there’s also a Chicago Fire one I have not been able to lay my hands on, more’s the pity.

Anyway, our protagonist Anna opens the book at the bedside of her dying and beloved grandfather. She fills the time by his bedside contemplating what a dickhole her older brother Kurt has become ever since joining the army (to be clear, Germany’s army in 1937) and getting on her case about not being an example to the Fatherland. We don’t have to dwell too much on Kurt’s character here (Cameron Dokey clearly didn’t), you can pretty much imagine your “stock Nazi asshole” character here and it’ll be basically the same thing.

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