I enjoyed the hard-back version, since this large book feels better honored that way. The quality of writing in the book is at a level where many adults would also find this book captivating, and well worth reading. I felt I lived and breathed with the heroine, suffered her sufferings, and delighted in her joys. I especially loved the use of first-person voice in this children’s book.

The clashes and challenge of learning mutual understanding and respect toward religion is a wonderful backdrop for a truly heroic story of a girl trying to grow up. Any children with either background, or wanting to learn more about either background, would be well-educated through this historical fiction children’s book. What this children’s book does have is a wonderful depiction of the meeting of two cultures- a rural farm girl with an inclination towards Catholicism, and a sophisticated Jewish city family. /rebates/2f97807636781802fHired-Girl-Schlitz-Laura-Amy-076367818X2fplp&. I wish it didn’t have the predictable girl-falls-in-love-with-master-of-the house! But that’s it’s only drawback. Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herselfbecause maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream ofa woman with a future. I’d like to say this is for all genders, but given it’s vague resemblance to Jane Eyre, it is really a young girl’s children’s book. However, the setting, in 1911, creates a distance that allows us to cut her some slack, as she perhaps overdramatizes both the difficulties and her romanticism. The dramatic voice of a 14-year-old, who now has to pretend to be 18 in order to work as a hired girl, is filled with the passions and emotions of any teenager today. This beautifully written historical fiction children’s book is quite hard to put down. “I have escaped! I have achieved the first stage of my emancipation! In a little while I will go on to Baltimore–and from thence I will begin my new life.”

The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz