Christmas After All: The Great
Depression Diary of Minnie Swift,
Indianapolis, Indiana 1932 (Dear
America Series) by Kathryn Lasky
Perhaps The Best Christmas Book I've Ever Read
To 11-year-old Minnie Swift, Christmas, 1932, is not going to be the time
of bounty shes used to. Instead, it has become the Time of the Dwindling.
The Great Depression has changed everything: Minnies father is working
fewer and fewer hours, her hungry family eats more and more aspic and
rumor of pork (high up on the Vomitron, a zero-to-ten scale Minnie and her
brother have invented to determine the vileness of their meager dinners),
and a tiny orphan girl has joined their family from Hearts Bend, Texas.
Minnie finds a worthy outlet in her daily journal, in which she records the
sometimes troubling, sometimes exhilarating experiences of one winter
month in Indianapolis during the depression. Nothing can subdue Minnies
lively spirit, although the disappearance of her father challenges her
sorely. Kathryn Laskys latest addition to the Dear America series is

chock-full of period details: Greta Garbos hairstyle, The Shadow radio
program, Charlie Chan, Hooverville shantytowns, Buck Rogers, Amelia
Earhart, and phrases like yee gads and go-to-the-dickens. Minnie is an
exuberant and witty chronicler of her family life, as well as the world
outside. Young readers will come away from Christmas After All with a
strong image of life in the 1930s, and a sense of the resiliency and
ingenuity of many Americans during that deeply troubled time. A historical
note and photos follow the diary, providing background to help readers
understand the era in which the fictional Minnie lived. (Ages 9 to 14)
--Emilie Coulter
Personal Review: Christmas After All: The Great Depression
Diary of Minnie Swift, Indianapolis, Indiana 1932 (Dear America
Series) by Kathryn Lasky
The "Dear America" books are something I can take or leave. MY
SECRET WAR was pretty good, as was WHEN CHRISTMAS COMES
AGAIN (not really a Christmas book, but about the "Hello girls" in World
War I), and the story of the Italian girl crossing the great plains. The Titanic
book was average and the Pearl Harbor book was pretty bad. I've heard
some pretty scathing criticisms about the two books involving Native
American characters.
But in CHRISTMAS AFTER ALL, Kathryn Lasky has created a
masterpiece within the diary format of the books.
It is the story of Minnie Swift, youngest of four sisters, her precocious
genius younger brother Ozzie, and her parents during the days of the
Great Depression. Dad's job is going badly and the family is reduced to
shutting down rooms in their home to cut down on coal bills. They rarely
have meat for supper, but eat a succession of aspics and "O'Grotons," as
Minnie calls them. Then, as December begins, Willie Faye Darling comes
into their lives. Willie Faye is the only daughter of cousins of Minnie's
mother. Her parents, from a small town called Heart's Bend, Texas, have
died after losing a battle with life in the Dust Bowl. Willie Faye is Minnie's
age (11), but looks two years younger due to malnutrition and hardships.
She arrives at the Swift home covered in dust and with a kitten named
Tumbleweed whose nose she had to suction out morning, noon and night
to keep him from smothering. Willie Faye has never seen an indoor
bathroom, gone to a movie, read a Buck Rogers comic, or listened to the
radio, so Minnie thinks that Willie Faye will have a lot to learn from them.
She never dreams what she--and the entire family--will learn from the
fragile-looking but tough little girl from the Dust Bowl when the ravages of
the Depression begin leaching away the family's security.
I have many of Lasky's other books and love them as well including
PRANK, which takes place in East Boston, and her adult mysteries starring
Calista Jacobs. But this story has a special magic to it, perhaps because it

is based on Lasky's mother's experiences as well as her own and the
characters ring true. Highly recommended.
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