Hitty's Travels #1: Civil War Days

From Publishers Weekly Based on Rachel Field's 1929 classic, Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, Hitty's Travels: Civil War Days by Ellen Weiss, illus. by Betina Ogden, features the doll heroine in a chapter book format. Here Hitty belongs to a plantation owner's daughter as the girl befriends Sarina, an enslaved girl. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From School Library Journal Gr 2-5-Based on Rachel Field's Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (Turtleback, 1929), this book continues the doll's travels through history. Hitty arrives at a plantation in North Carolina as a birthday present for eight-year-old Nell. Nell also receives a slave, a gift she does not want. She immediately begins to teach Sarina correct grammar and, later, how to read, despite the fact that this is forbidden by law. Eventually, the two friends are caught and get into trouble with Nell's father. As the Civil War begins, Nell and her mother admit that they are not entirely on the side of the South, and the two girls know that nothing can ever stop them from being friends. The book provides a fairly accurate if rather whitewashed version of life on a plantation and goes into more depth and story than Mary Pope Osborne's "Magic Tree House" series (Random) written for the same age group. The main distracting element is the point of view, which is uneven and often confusing since parts of the book are related by Hitty, but others revert to a third-person narration. Characterization is rather stereotypical with the harsh slave owners, the weak Southern belle, the friendly child, the good slaves, and the handsome schoolmaster. Black-and-white illustrations are adequate.