Title: The Hired Girl

Author: Laura Amy Schlitz

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Publishing Date: September 8 2015

Source: Barnes & Noble

About: Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself—because maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream of—a woman with a future.

Inspired by her grandmother’s journal, Newbery Medalist Laura Amy Schlitz brings her sharp wit and keen eye to early twentieth-century America in a comedic tour de force destined to become a modern classic. Joan’s journey from the muck of the chicken coop to the comforts of a society household in Baltimore (Electricity! Carpet sweepers! Sending out the laundry!) takes its reader on an exploration of feminism and housework, religion and literature, love and loyalty, cats, hats, bunions, and burns.

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I’m Did I like it?? Did I not like it? Hard to tell. You see, the first half of this book was absolutely amazing. I was so in love! I felt sure it was going to be a 5-star, but then once I got to the half-way mark it just went downhill. I have some complaints… but I also have several good thing to say, so stay tuned! (or stay reading…) 🙂

L I K E D . . . 

– The time & setting: 1911 Baltimore, which was fascinating because I’d only ever read one other book set in this time period, and I loved learning about the fashion and culture and everything in between. It’s definitely a time I want to learn more about, and I haven’t read a historical fiction in so long!

– The diary-style of the book. Again, this was so refreshing! I want more of these in YA! I love them so much, and Laura Amy Schlitz did a fantastic job at it. (Plus it makes me want to write in my journals more often…)

– The main character Joan. She’s sassy yet feminine, which is a nice combination. So often in MG and YA literature that I read, girls can’t be strong (physically and mentally) and like pink and frilly dresses. But Joan was girly and a shopaholic… and was stubborn and worked hard. I loved this! If anyone knows me, I’m a girly-girl and I appreciate pink and dressing up… but there aren’t many girls like this in YA, which is sad. I’d like to see more of this in historical and contemporary, and it was great. Joan was romantic, and absolutely hilarious. And as an added bonus: she’s a bookworm!

“I think I would rather have a cat than a sweetheart, after all. They are less trouble, and even the handsomest sweetheart is sadly lacking in fur.” – The Hired Girl

– Laura Amy Schlitz’s writing style. I basically wanted to quote the entire book. It was so poetic and the language was rich and challenging, at times, to read. (At least definitely a higher reading level than other books in this particular age the book is geared towards.) I want more books with words I haven’t known since kindergarten, and this was one of them! I definitely learned some new ones, which brings me to my next point.

“Great works of art are universal, and in them we behold our everyday struggles and homely joys.” – The Hired Girl

– The religious viewpoints: Joan is Catholic. And her employers are Jewish. I enjoyed learning about both religions (I am Christian, but Protestant – not Catholic – so I did learn a good bit about Catholicism.) A good portion of the book was about Joan wanting to take a Sacrament – to become an official Catholic – but meanwhile trying to tell the Rosenbachs more about her faith. (Which I admired a lot.) This isn’t labeled as Christian Fiction, but it surrounds a great deal of Joan’s faith and learning about the Rosenbachs’ faith. (For example, Joan does the dishes on the Sabbath since her employers and their other servant are Jewish and don’t work on this particular day of the week.)

– Joan is 14! My age, yay! I feel like in Middle Grade 14-year-olds are either made too immature, to match that of the younger audience, I suppose. Or too immature in Young Adult (because there’s an age gap between the older audience) or too mature (to match that older age group.) It’s frustrating, and in general there aren’t that many 14-year-olds in either genre, so in the rare occasion when they are focused on… it’s not done right. I liked Joan and felt she was nicely portrayed as far as her age goes. (I mean, I can relate.) 😉

D I S L I K E D . . . 

– Alright, so let me lay this out for you: Joan is our 14-year-old heroine. She runs away from home and the Rosenbach family hires her and takes her under their wing. But Joan lies about her age to get the job: they think she is 18. A whopping 4-year-gap. Meanwhile, later in the book (towards the middle, and this is where my complaints began): she falls in love. With a 21-year-old Jew. 21. First I thought this man was 18, which is still quite a gap. And though he believes her to be 18 (0r at the very least 16 or 17) and I do realize this was a different time and things were done differently… quite honestly, it weirded me out. At first, I will admit, I swooned. I’m 14! I’m a romantic!

But theeeeen… this is where Joan really bothered me.

– SHE IS SOOO NAIVE. And let me rant here, because this why 14-year-olds don’t shouldn’t snog (I like that word ok? ok) about with boys – particularly that of an older age: 7 YEARS. No. I do love that in this time and book, people placed a higher importance on kissing and boys giving girls gifts. (“Miss Skraggs, if {spoiler removed} has been kissing you, and buying you gifts, you had every reason to believe you were engaged.”) but Joan thought she was stinking engaged. She went on and on about how much she loved this dude, and how they’d run away to Paris together (yep. Paris.) and comparing it to Jane Eyre and all her romance books… and I’m sitting here like:

I just didn’t like that. And I knew something was going to go wrong there.

– This book could have been much shorter. It is a decent length (Goodreads says it’s 400 but my copy is only 387) but at around 250-300ish I was pretty much done. I was getting annoyed with Joan and I felt that the last good bit was surrounded the “romance” (which, as I said before, made me a bit uncomfortable.)

4 stars! (Not bad for the first read of 2016.)

overall: i did have several complaints. buuut i had a lot more good things to say – especially that this book had a lot of interesting aspects that i don’t see in mg or ya a whole lot. so! let me know in the comments! is this something you’d like to read? have you read it before? tell meeeee!