Following my last post, I decided to go and search my old favs of the [“Dear Canada”](https://www.scholastic.ca/dearcanada/books/) series and just wanted to guide people back to it if you also forgot how great they were + guide people to them if they haven’t heard of them. **This series was life-changing for us growing up in Canada in the early 2000’s and I hope that still holds true to the kids of today.**
Though it is specific to Canadian culture/experiences/hardship, it is *truly* an amazing series for anyone interested in history. It is done in diary format, and to my knowledge is always from a girl’s perspective and meant for elementary/middle school readers.
**Despite growing out of the style, I will 100% will enjoy them forever and they literally changed my life.**
This series is *the* material that showed me what my province’s school system tried not to go too far into about my country. Though we were *very* educated in what Canada has done in the past to immigrants and non-english people, it was textbook, y’know? *Statistical.* And though these diaries are fiction, they shed a lot of light in what it was like growing through hard times, especially for people that were marginalized.
[“A Desperate Road to Freedom”](https://www.scholastic.ca/books/view/dear-canada-a-desperate-road-to-freedom) and an [“An Ocean Apart”](https://www.scholastic.ca/books/view/dear-canada-an-ocean-apart) were serious eye openers for me. Our teachers explained what it was like facing racism upon escaping slavery in the states + what it was like under the head tax laws, but this perspective gives a better picture at what it truly must have felt like. *I am not exaggerating when I say both those books had 10 year old me crying into the pages.*
**I’m so happy to hear they are still making them, and just found one written well after I left the genre + had read most of them-**
[“These Are My Words”](https://www.scholastic.ca/books/view/dear-canada-these-are-my-words) is written by someone who actually survived a residential school and I am so fucking pleased that the author chose the timeline to be set in the 60s, likely when she herself experienced it. It reminds people how close to the present this experience was, and I thank her wholeheartedly for writing something so deeply painful.
**If you, like me, haven’t read these books in forever I implore you to go do so. If they’re new to you, I also urge you to check them out.**
by shinnith