Best Kids Books

Rating: (14 reviews)
Author: Beth Seidel Levine
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Product Description
In April of 1917, Simone Spencer’s world changes. Her beloved brother Will goes off to war, and Simone seeks a way to help. The passionate daughter of a feisty French mother and a rebellious upper-class father, Simone is not cut out for the society life she is meant to lead. So, when General Pershing calls for French-speaking American girls to operate the switchboards on the Western Front, Simone becomes one of the first brave “Hello Girls” whose courage helps lead the Allies to victory. In the end, Christmas brings the Spencers back together again. Amazon.com Review
After stops at Pearl Harbor and the Great Depression, this exceptional historical-fiction series for young adults continues with the diary of a “hello girl”–one of the brave young switchboard operators who volunteers for the U.S. Army Signal Corps during WWI.

New York society life couldn’t be more boring for 17-year-old Simone Spencer, but her diary entries are about to become a lot more exciting–for better and for worse—as President Wilson brings America into the fight against the Kaiser. Simone’s beloved brother Will signs up to be a doughboy, and soon after she herself finagles her way overseas to help the war effort, putting her native-sounding French (thanks to Simone’s fiery mother, her “Maman”) to use at a combat switchboard. (In the chaos before the liberation of St. Mihiel, Simone recalls, “If anyone had happened on this room in the midst of the battle … they might just have thought we had gone perfectly mad. They might have thought we were screaming at one another in a sanitarium instead of an office of war.”)

First-time author Beth Seidel Levine does a tremendous job with her debut, spinning a charming story that folds in period details and current events with another winning Dear America female protagonist. Kids will learn along with Simone how women’s involvement in the war would have a lasting impact–and, as Simone’s Maman says, how sometimes “things work out better when they go the opposite way of what is expected.” (Ages 9 to 12) –Paul Hughes