Orphan at My Door: The Home Child Diary of Victoria Cope

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is an assistant professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.

Readers of these latest additions to the Dear Canada series are invited
to witness life in late 19th- and early 20th-century Canada through the
eyes of two 11-year-old girls. Each book, employing a diary format,
focuses on a particular aspect of Canadian history.

A Prairie as Wide as the Sea recounts the life a young English girl
named Ivy. Ivy’s family has left behind a comfortable home in London
and moved to Saskatchewan, hoping to make a fortune. What they find is
the opposite of what they had imagined. Orphan at My Door recounts the
experience of Mary Anna, who is taken in by an Ontario family. The
orphaned, disadvantaged British girl is one of the “Home Children”
who were sent to Canada to provide cheap farm labor and domestic
service. Both books offer a view of life in the past from a perspective
that is both intimate and entertaining.

One great strength of the Dear Canada series lies in Scholastic
Canada’s choice of authors. Sarah Ellis and Jean Little are both
well-known and widely acclaimed Canadian writers of children’s books.
Another great strength is the use of the personal diary as a literary
form to introduce young readers to the realities of everyday life in
another time and place. Both Ellis and Little use it effectively,
offering a good balance of day-to-day details and narrative to retain
the reader’s interest.

The diaries are well-researched and include historical notes and
illustrations at the end of each volume. The books themselves have been
beautifully published in attractive hardcover volumes, replete with
rough-cut pages and ribbon markers that make them look and feel like a
girl’s real diary. Both books are highly recommended.