Standing in the Light

Standing in the Light:  The Captive Diary of Catharine Carey Logan is a fictional diary by Mary Pope Osborne, written for the Dear America series.  Caty Logan is a 13-year-old girl living with her family in the Delaware Valley in Pennsylvania.  The Logans are Quakers - a pacifist religious group that began in England and spread to North America in the late 1600s, when some of them emigrated to escape religious persecution.  Quakers have been historically very politically active in the fight for universal civil rights and gender equality, although they also tend to practice modesty and humility in general behavior and appearance (at least during the time in which this book is set).

It is 1763, just after the French and Indian War, and Caty is worried because there have been reports of raids on farmers around the valley, in retaliation of the English government going back on their treaties with the local villages regarding land ownership.  Caty's father believes that their family will be safe if they show the Indians that they trust them, and has faith in the friendly relations the Quakers have had with the Delaware Indians in the past.  Despite this, however, Caty and her brother Thomas are taken captive on their way to school one winter morning; after hearing the rumors at school of people being scalped, Caty fears the worst.

After a while, Caty loses track of the days, though curiosity and what seems like admiration causes her captors to allow her to continue writing in her diary, and from the day she and Thomas are taken, the book becomes a letter to their father, in case it should ever find its way back to him.

Once the small party reaches a village, Thomas is taken away:  will she ever see him or the rest of their family again?

The Prestige

The Prestige by Christopher Priest is the story of a feud between two stage magicians, around the beginning of the 20th century (mostly) in England. Rupert Angier (stage name "The Great Danton") and Alfred Borden (Le Professeur de la Magie) spend almost as much time retaliating against and spying on each other as they do rehearsing and improving their illusions. It all starts when Borden interrupts a seance being held by Angier. He later regrets his actions, but to Angier, it is unforgivable. The rest of their lives are spent trying to sabotage each other's shows, and when Borden begins performing an illusion he calls The New Transported Man, Angier will stop at nothing to discover the secret to the performance and improve upon it for use in his own act.

I saw the movie adaptation of this when it came out, and knew I had to read the book when I got the chance. I have to admit, though, I was a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong - the book isn't bad. It's just not what I expected, exactly. It starts off slow, and no matter how many times I thought the pace would surely begin to pick up, it did not. That's not to say it was necessarily boring, though! It's been a long time since I saw the movie, so I didn't really remember much about the story, so I was constantly intrigued about how certain things were going to play out, and what was going to happen next. I'm glad I didn't remember the details regarding The New Transported Man from the movie, since I think that would've just made the book boring for me.

Voyage on the Great Titanic

Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady by Ellen Emerson White is a part of the Dear America collection for children/young adults. The books are written as though you are reading the main character's diary, and started being published widely after the American Girls series got very popular. I got this one at a book fair in middle school, and I still enjoyed reading it as an adult.

Margaret Ann Brady is an orphaned girl in England who is living in a home and school run by nuns, one of whom has given her a diary, which is where the book essentially begins. Margaret fills the reader in on her back-story - about her parents and her brother, and how she came to be at the orphanage. But she has also been taken on by a wealthy American woman to act as a companion on board the Titanic. While I'm sure we all know the story of that tragic event, I found it interesting to read about from Margaret's perspective, and the historical significance is not made light of although the book is intended for a fairly young audience.