My Name is America: The Journal of Douglas Allen Deeds

By Rodman Philbrick

New York:  Scholastic, 2001

When I was thinking about historical fiction books to read, I immediately thought of the "Dear America" and "My Name is America" series.  I used to read many of them, and wondered what it would be like to go back and read one now, so many years later.  When I was deciding which one to pick, however, I was stuck.  Since I'd read so many before, I had pretty much chosen the ones that I knew interested me.  That's when I saw this book on the shelf and wondered, "how on Earth will they deal with an issue as big as the Donner Party Expedition in a children's book?"  I decided I had to read and find out.

In this diary, the reader follows the Donner party through the eyes of one young traveler named Douglas Deeds (an actual member of the Donner party, although these words are fictional).  At the beginning, his entries are full of hopes and dreams for the rich land of California, where they are headed.  Slowly, however, things begin to go wrong.  People peel off of the wagon train to turn back, settle, or strike out on their own or with other groups, and the party dwindles.  There are many clashing beliefs and personalities within the group, and one wrong decision dooms the party:  they decide to take a "shortcut" through the Sierra Nevada mountain range, but their travels are harder and slower than expected, and they get snowed in.  Conditions get worse and worse, and food becomes first scarce and then nonexistent.  The group is faced with a terrible decision:  what will they do for food?

Although the diary does not come out and say "cannibalism" explicitly, it is pretty vividly described. The people in the small Forlorn Hope group were depicted as having gone insane, which was scary for me to read, let alone for a young child.  It is called "the forbidden meat" several times, and the way he describes what happens is a little confusing.  In the author's note and the brief historical summary, it is dealt with more directly, explaining the history of what happened.  Overall, I think that it was handled as well as it could be; still disturbing, but the situation is disturbing in itself.

One thing that bothered me was the discussion of both women and the Native Americans.  The treatment was true to the time period, but to children reading it now, there would (hopefully!) be a disconnect.  If students read this in school, and even if they read it at home, I think it would take some extra work to not only explain the event of cannibalism but also to explain why women were disregarded in big decisions, and why Native Americans were largely hated.

Overall, although the book was intriguing, I don't know that I would include it in my classroom.  The material, although tragic, does not apply to much else, and I don't know if a discussion of cannibalism would be appropriate in a school setting.