Molly's World of 1944
 Catherine Gourley
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 1999 Pleasant Co. Pubs. Middleton, WI
  ISBN: 1562477730


Travel back in time & meet Molly & her family as they face the choices & challenges on the home-front. Book 6 in The American Girls Collections series is all about Growing Up in World War Two America.

Culled from the diaries, letters, advertisements, newsreels & newspapers of those years, you will read what it was like growing up in the 1940s in a world at war & what families & the nation did to ensure there was enough to eat & fight with.

I was a little girl “over there” during these years, so I picked up this bright history book with a certain degree of remembrances of things past.

This is an interesting way of looking at history - from a girl's point of view of how a world war affected her childhood. While Molly is a fictional character, there are enough women still alive who can attest to Molly's experiences, because the places & the times are real.

& so we begin Molly's story, where we meet her family sitting around their mother while she reads out loud a long letter from their Dad away at war; to a map, where most journeys start.

A map of a world at war. Molly's class studies the movement of troops & the battle fronts. From the Hawaiian Islands where Japan & America first became enemies to factories & shipyards where mothers & aunts work after the men have left for war to New York Harbor where Red Cross volunteers, serve coffee & doughnuts to the millions of soldiers about to ship out. From the farmlands run by the women to keep producing America's food to England where American troops arrive, ready to fight with their allies against Japan, Germany & Italy.

Molly's teacher explains why there is war: listing the ills of the world of the 1930s, until a man named Adolf Hitler got into politics & promised jobs & food for all Germans. When he became the leader of Germany, he turned into a cruel dictator & began invading neighboring countries. Europe did not want another war so it let him get away with it until he conquered Poland. Even then, many Americans said that it was Europe's problem & that America should stay out of it.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, Japan had also been invading other countries & in an attempt to stop that, the US Congress ordered all shipments to Japan stopped. In retaliation Japan attacked Pearl Harbor & America was at war.

In Molly's World we learn about President Roosevelt's Fireside Chats; the Patriotic Fever at Home & how the war affected every ordinary person's life: From Blackout Curtains to Air-Raid Supplies to Model Aircrafts to Food Rationing to Victory Gardens, Canned Vegetables & much, much more.

A book for girls has, naturally, a section on Victory Style. In Playtime in Wartime we see the books, tools & toys children used, & don't forget America's favorite pastime, Baseball, in which the All-American Girls Professional Ball League was founded with the players in divided skirts!

What else was in Molly's world? What was Homwetown, USA like? Who was The Enemy in the Sky? What were the Tough Times? The Brave Smiles & who were the Women At Work, the Women in Uniform with Wind in Their Veins? What was V-E Day, The Death of a President, Surrender in the Pacific & A Thousand Cranes? Who was Anne Frank & what did Americans find when they opened up Hitler's Concentration Camps?

Molly's World of 1944 is filled with nostalgic icons & while it contains magazine-like sidebars, photos & articles on everything from clothes to heroes; factory work to dogs; war & peace, it is couched in such a bland language, which makes me nervouse about sanitized history. Some articles simply reek of PC guilt-tripping. In the end we experience a Homecoming & A Peek into the Future.

One glaring omission is any reference to the daughters of Japanese-Americans - there certainly were girls in those camps in the American West! & there's almost nothing about money - what things cost & what people earned.

Notwithstanding the squeaky-cleanliness & disturbingly superficial information, this is a worthy bridge to a time that was. A way to connect today's girls with their grandmothers' girlhood.

It is with relief that I notice: Addy's World of 1864 about a Black American girl's life & Josefina's World of 1824 looks like it's about a Hispanic girl's life. There are also Felicity's World of 1774; Kirsten's World of 1854 & Samantha's World of 1904. One day, will there be a book about a First People's daughter of 1554? Preferably not a princess.
(07/29/01)

Rebecca