This book contains facts, photographs, and illustrations depicting life in the colonies. I was worried it would be historical fiction because it is connected with the American Girls company, but it is a nonfiction book. The book is divided into 4 sections and includes information on historical people at the time such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington. It is mostly a book of descriptions of items used and defines terms such as "wig powderer" and "chamber pot." It would be a good reference book for students to look up items used during colonial times. I gave it three stars because the pictures of the items make it a good glossary type of book. ( )

This book is the nonfiction companion to the American Girl stories; it focuses on Felicity's world in 1774. The facts and visuals in this thick picture book are sophisticated (just enough), clearly presented, and very accurate. Young historians will delight in reading and viewing this-- even if they are not into American Girl. ( )

Read by Kelly, Spring 2006:
"This book takes the popular American Girls Series about Felicity and explores actual people and events that took place during this time period. The book is set up like the eyewitness series books with a lot of pictures and short blurbs. The book is set up into chapters and the main focus of the book is how young women grew up in the colonial period. Some of the book focused on schooling, fashion, slavery, and The American Revolution. The audience for this book would probably more toward 6th grade or later elementary. I liked how the book was set up because it had a paragraph on each page on the topic and then it had a lot of pictures with captions. One of the challenges that I could see with informational texts is the vocabulary. I think that the book I read did a good job of dealing with this problem. There were pictures to show unfamiliar objects like a horn book for school and were defined with a short blurb. Also, it might be hard to get students interested in reading informational texts. This book appeals to young girls by using a popular fictional character to get a student interested in history. This book focuses on how young girls grew up in the colonial period which definitely will make it interesting." ( )

This talks about every aspect of Colonial life, including life in cities and farms, the role of women and children, and an in-depth look at slavery. The book also explains quite a few facts about the Revolutionary War- both the battles, and how that changed people's lives. ( )