Dear America is a series of historical fiction novels for children published by Scholastic starting in 1996. By 1998, the series had 12 titles with 3.5 million copies in print.[1] Each book is written in the form of a diary of a young woman's life during important events or time periods in American history, such as the establishment of Plymouth Colony, the Salem Witch Trials, slavery, the California gold rush, the Great Depression, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the sinking of the RMS Titanic, and most major wars. Originally all the books had a ribbon inserted as a bookmark, furthering the concept of the book as a diary, but this was later discontinued.
Nine books in the series were adapted as half-hour television episodes for HBO in 1999 and 2000, followed by three volumes of the spin-off series The Royal Diaries.
There are thirty-six books in the original Dear America series, which was published between 1996 and 2004.
The series was relaunched in September 2010 with its first new title since 2004, The Fences Between Us by Kirby Larson, as well as re-releases of earlier books. 2011 saw the publication of the first sequel in the series: Cannons at Dawn, a sequel to The Winter of Red Snow.
| data-sort-type="date" | Date (original) | data-sort-type="date" | Date (reprint) | Author | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | September 2010 | A Journey to the New World | |||
| 1996 | September 2010 | The Winter of Red Snow: The Revolutionary War Diary of Abigail Jane Stewart, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 1777 | |||
| 1996 | April 2011 | When Will This Cruel War Be Over? The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson, Gordonsville, Virginia, 1864 | |||
| 1997 | January 2011 | A Picture of Freedom The Diary of Clotee, a Slave Girl, Belmont Plantation, Virginia, 1859 | |||
| 1997 | April 2012 | Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell, 1847 | |||
| 1997 | So Far from Home: The Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1847 | ||||
| 1997 | July 2011 | I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly The Diary of Patsy, a Freed Girl, Mars Bluff, South Carolina, 1865 | |||
| 1998 | West to a Land of Plenty: The Diary of Teresa Angelino Viscardi, New York to Idaho Territory, 1883 | ||||
| 1998 | Dreams in the Golden Country: The Diary of Zipporah Feldman, a Jewish Immigrant Girl, New York City, 1903 | ||||
| 1998 | May 2011 | , Delaware Valley, Pennsylvania, 1763 | |||
| 1998 | November 2010 | Voyage on the Great Titanic The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, RMS Titanic, 1912 | |||
| 1998 | A Line in the Sand: The Alamo Diary of Lucinda Lawrence, Gonzales, Texas, 1836 | ||||
| 1999 | My Heart Is on the Ground The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880[3] | ||||
| 1999 | The Great Railroad Race: The Diary of Libby West, Utah Territory, 1868 | ||||
| 1999 | March 2011 | A Light in the Storm: The Civil War Diary of Amelia Martin, Fenwick Island, Delaware, 1861 | |||
| 1999 | The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow The Diary of Sarah Nita, a Navajo Girl, New Mexico, 1864 | ||||
| 2000 | A Coal Miner's Bride: The Diary of Anetka Kaminska, Lattimer, Pennsylvania, 1896 | ||||
| 2000 | Color Me Dark The Diary of Nellie Lee Love, The Great Migration North, Chicago, Illinois, 1919 | ||||
| 2000 | One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping: The Diary of Julie Weiss, Vienna, Austria to New York, 1938 | ||||
| 2000 | My Secret War: The World War II Diary of Madeline Beck, Long Island, New York, 1941 | ||||
| 2001 | Valley of the Moon: The Diary Of Maria Rosalia de Milagros, Sonoma Valley, Alta California, 1846 | ||||
| 2001 | Seeds of Hope: The Gold Rush Diary of Susanna Fairchild, California Territory, 1849 | ||||
| 2001 | September 2012 | Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1932[4] | |||
| 2001 | Early Sunday Morning: The Pearl Harbor Diary of Amber Billows, Hawaii, 1941 | ||||
| 2001 | My Face to the Wind: The Diary of Sarah Jane Price, a Prairie Teacher, Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1881 | ||||
| 2002 | Where Have All the Flowers Gone? The Diary of Molly MacKenzie Flaherty, Boston, Massachusetts, 1968 | ||||
| 2002 | A Time for Courage: The Suffragette Diary of Kathleen Bowen, Washington, D.C., 1917 | ||||
| 2002 | Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: The Diary of Bess Brennan, Perkins School for the Blind, 1932 | ||||
| 2002 | Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards, Dalhart, Texas, 1935 | ||||
| 2002 | When Christmas Comes Again: The World War I Diary of Simone Spencer, New York City to the Western Front, 1917 | ||||
| 2002 | Land of the Buffalo Bones: The Diary of Mary Ann Elizabeth Rodgers, an English Girl in Minnesota, New Yeovil, Minnesota, 1873 | ||||
| 2003 | Love Thy Neighbor: The Tory Diary of Prudence Emerson, Green Marsh, Massachusetts, 1774 | ||||
| 2003 | All the Stars in the Sky: The Santa Fe Trail Diary of Florrie Mack Ryder, The Santa Fe Trail, 1848 | ||||
| 2004 | Look to the Hills: The Diary of Lozette Moreau, a French Slave Girl, New York Colony, 1763 | ||||
| 2004 | September 2011 | I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1691 | |||
| 2004 | January 2014 | Hear My Sorrow: The Diary of Angela Denoto, a Shirtwaist Worker, New York City, 1909 | |||
| September 2010 | The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis, Seattle, Washington, 1941[5] [6] | ||||
| January 2011 | Like the Willow Tree: The Diary of Lydia Amelia Pierce, Portland, Maine, 1918[7] | ||||
| May 2011 | Cannons at Dawn: The Second Diary of Abigail Jane Stewart, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 1779 | ||||
| September 2011 | With the Might of Angels: The Diary of Dawnie Rae Johnson, Hadley, Virginia, 1954 | ||||
| January 2012 | Behind the Masks: The Diary of Angeline Reddy, Bodie, California, 1880[8] | ||||
| March 2013 | A City Tossed and Broken: The Diary of Minnie Bonner, San Francisco, California, 1906[9] | ||||
| March 2013 | Down the Rabbit Hole: The Diary of Pringle Rose, Chicago, Illinois, 1871[10] | ||||
Three similar series were also published by Scholastic:
In addition, several of Scholastic's international divisions have published series inspired by the Dear America series:
Similar series from other publishers include:
Half-hour dramatizations of nine books from the series aired on HBO between March 1999 and July 2000. They were also played on FX in the 2000s. As of November 2025, all nine episodes are available for streaming on Tubi and The Roku Channel, split into two "volumes"[11] of six and three episodes.[12] [13]
