R My Name Is Rachel

by Patricia Reilly Giff
Scott County Library audiobook 3 CDs
read by Cynthia Holloway
genre: YA historical fiction

I mostly enjoyed this book set during the Great Depression. Rachel and her two younger siblings lost their mom when the youngest child was born. Now their dad has lost his job and they're moving to a small town in the country so he can find new work.

Rachel is 12 and loves to read. Joey is 11 and very good-natured. Cassie is 10 and likes things neat.

Two things that bugged me that I kept hoping the author would rectify: Rachel and Miss Mitzi love to write letters. Toward the start of the book, they were writing to Admiral Byrd to ask about the South Pole and the polar bears there. What?! I kept waiting for Miss Mitzi to point out the error to Rachel. Did people not know in the 1930s that polar bears live at the North Pole and penguins at the South Pole? The other irritation was my error - Rachel tries to think of the mice as friendly, like Mickey and Minnie. I didn't think the characters were known at that time. But I just checked and both were featured in films in the very late 1920s and the 1930s. My mistake!

Some of the situations got on my nerves, like Rachel capitulating to Cassie about the money their dad left. I loved Rachel's love of books and reading. I loved the artist and the drawings. Miss Mitzi was a hero.