The Diaries

An intimate view of history created by Kathryn Lasky, these books are fictional diaries of young girls who experience dramatic events. Some are ordinary citizens, some are real princesses like Elizabeth Tudor

When my publisher came up with the idea for the Dear America and the Royal Diaries I was thrilled. In the Dear America series the diaries were based on fictional people who lived through significant events in American history. So I could try and imagine how a little pilgrim girl felt when she left to cross the Atlantic Ocean to come to America. What was life like on the Mayflower? Did she find a best friend? What were the storms like? Did she throw up? Was she frightened? How did she feel in this new land?

The Royal Diaries were slightly different from the Dear America ones. These books were based on people who had really lived—Princesses like Elizabeth Tudor, Marie Antoinette, Mary Queen of Scots, but they kept fictional diaries.

For me both these series were the chance of a lifetime as a writer for it combined two things I love—history and doing research. And there was the added bonus since it was to be fiction I could fill in the gaps that history books and primary source material might leave out. I would not change history. I would not give happily ever after endings when they did not really happen but I could interpret how that person might feel. I could delve into a character like Elizabeth Tudor and try and imagine how she would feel when her father often banished her from the court to live in a lonely castle with her governess. The best thing of all was getting up every day and trying to crawl into people’s heads—from a Pilgrim girl to a Princess.

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Journey to the New World

Twelve-year-old Mem presents a diary account of the trip she and her family made on the Mayflower in 1620 and their first year in the New World.

Dreams in the Golden Country

Twelve-year-old Zippy, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, tells of the first eighteen months of her family's life on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1903-1904.

Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor, England 1544

Daughter of a fallen queen, young Princess Elizabeth lives a complicated and dangerous life. The childhood of one of England's greatest monarchs is revealed in the form a diary.

Marie Antoinette, Princess of Versailles, Austria-France, 1769

Young Marie Antoinette is to be married off to the eldest grandson of the French king Louis XV. To prepare her for this awesome responsibility, she must be trained to write, read, speak French, dress, act... even breathe.

Blazing West: The Journal of Augustus Pelletier

Fourteen-year-old Gus, the youngest member of Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, tells of his adventures during the expedition.

Christmas After All

Eleven-year-old Minnie Swift recounts how her family dealt with the difficult times during the Depression and how the arrival of an orphan from Texas changed their lives in Indianapolis just before Christmas 1932.

A Time For Courage: The Suffragette Diary of Kathleen Bowen, Washington, D.C. 1917

Thirteen-year-old Kathleen Bowen tells of her life in Washington, D.C. in 1917, as she juggles concerns about the national battle for women's suffrage, the war in Europe, and her own school work and family.

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Kathryn Lasky

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