This entire series is a wonderful way to learn history or teach it to adolescents. I find today's generations seem to recall more when they learn through other people (pop songs, celebrity gossip, etc.), so what better way to teach history than through someone else's perspective? Yes, "authentic" diaries would be "better", but would the language really hold the modern student's attention? Did the diary writer know what WOULD be important in the context of history? Probably not.

This book is one of the Dear Canada series, which are historical novels, written in diary format, about fictional girls during different periods of Canadian history.

After their father dies of smallpox in the winter of 1666, thirteen-year-old Helene St. Onge and her older sister, sixteen-year-old Catherine, are left all alone in the world, their mother having died when Helene was a baby. Catherine decides they will leave France to make a new life in the New World. New France is mostly populated by men, and women are needed for their wives. Catherine will marry a settler, and Helene will help in her household until she is old enough to marry. But things do not go as planned. Catherine dies during the long sea voyage, and Helene finds herself arriving in New France, all alone in a strange new land. Can Helene build a new life for herself in this new world?

I really enjoyed this book in the Dear Canada series. I love reading about colonial times, so I really enjoyed the setting of Montreal in 1666. Helene was an appealing narrator and I loved reading her "diary" of all that happened to her. I would definitely recommend this book to readers who enjoyed other books in this series, or who like other historical diary fiction series, such as Dear America and the Royal Diaries. ( )

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