My Secret War: The World War II Diary of Madeline Beck, 1941

This diary is about a young girl living on Long Island in New York just before and just after the start of World War II. Her father is in the military and, as such, their family moves around a lot.

She is staying with her mother at a house with two refugees from Germany. Her problems are typical problems, for a while; not fitting in with the other girls, wanting to wear different clothes, things like that, but this changes with the start of the U.S. involvement in the war.

The book does a good job showing how "average" people living in "average" communities were affected by the war, and the many things that they did to help raise money and materials for the war effort.

The book also deals with two historical facts. It briefly mentions the internment of Japanese Americans just after the start of the war, and then it covers the story of the time German saboteurs were landed in the U.S. in Florida and on Long Island. Eight men were supposed to carry out a program of sabotaging various businesses and transportation facilities, but they were caught before they could do anything really bad.

As always, there's an excellent historical section at the end of the book to help place events in the book into proper perspective. Another really good book in the Dear America series.

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