More than 50 American girls under 13 from around the United States tell the story of life in every decade, from 1910 to 2010.
There's so much here. Girls are dancing in the streets at the end of WW I, climbing trees in a skirt and pantaloons, losing Japanese American friends to internment camps and living through blackouts during the second world war. A Vietnamese American girl escapes Saigon as a 5-year-old at the end of the Vietnam War and grows up in rural Georgia. A Middle Eastern American girl attends her private Islamic school in Michigan on 9-11. A fifth grader toasts marshmallows at a slumber party one day and supervises a National Day of Silence for Gay and Lesbian Rights the next day at school.
This is American culture at its truest as over fifty girls of various races, regions, religions and economic classes reveal what’s universal and what’s unique, the challenges and prejudices, the desires and disappointments, hopes and losses, desires and joys.
Fun pop culture highlights from the decade open each chapter — did you know peppermint Life Savers were inspired by the life saving devices used in the Titanic disaster of 1912? — and there's a brief history of the decade’s events in politics, education, medicine, technology and entertainment.
Free from the influences that shape adulthood, young girls reveal American life in eye-opening ways.