A Brighter Tomorrow: My Journey With Julie (American Girl Beforever Journey)

Great book, my daughter loved it. I generally like this series of books.

a++++

I really enjoy these American Girl Beforever books. They may not have impeccable plotting or totally consistent time travel details from one to another, but I think for their intended audience of kids between 2nd and 5th grade they are great. I liked this one more than the Kaya one I read, maybe because Julie was presented as more of a three dimensional girl than Kaya is. The present day girl is dealing with just having moved to a new city and worrying that her parents may get a divorce. She travels back to 1975 (not 1974 like it says on the cover) and meets Julie, a girl dealing with her own family issues. Julie also gets involved in the growing environmental movement (it's in a very low-key, pick up your trash kind of way) as well as the struggle for girls to be allowed to play sports. I think these are great themes to introduce young readers too and they are presented in a non preachy format. As usual, I am not pleased that some of the decision trees direct you to access the website, but my kids are pretty good about understanding that they may not have instant access to a website, if at all. There is always a non-website choice at their disposal.

This was a well-written novel. Even in the choose-your-own-adventure format, the main character manages to learn life-lessons and have real feelings and growth in each version of the branching story, as well as visiting different real-life San Francisco landmarks. I enjoyed reading it along with my kid, and going back and trying things differently to explore the different options. The book doesn't include all the endings. Some of the endings, with more branching choices within them, are only available on the publisher's website, so you have to follow links (and then find the right book from a menu screen), and switch to reading through a different interface on their website. If we had bought the print edition, then I guess I could understand this as a cost-saving measure, because it let them keep the book down to a reasonable page-count. But why not include the whole story in the e-book, at least? One download should be able to put the whole thing into the iPad, and then you could read it all offline in the same interface. I can't think of any reason that the Kindle Edition shouldn't include all the pages and options in the story, making it self-contained. That just seems like lazy e-book development, and I took away a star for that reason.

This was the fourth book in the series that we read. We are huge American Girl fans in this house and avid readers. Put them both together in this "create your own adventure" type of book and you have a winner! I love that you get to make decisions as you go along in the book. You are part of the adventure! A lot of fun as the kids choose which path to go down and how they create their story by skipping around! A new twist! I like it! A real book in hand! You can never go wrong with AG!

I have an 8yr old daughter who loves American Girl books but, not the 'historical girl' ones. These Beforever books being the exception! She loves the 'choose your own adventure' style books and has read most of the Innerstar University ones from American Girl. So, she was definitely up for the Beforever series! This one was a fun one for her as it didn't seem quite so long ago, yet things were definitely different. I'm really happy with all the Beforever books she's read. She's learning about what it was like to be a young girl in a different time. And, Julie is so likable that this has sparked her interest in the other books about Julie.

My girls have been a fan of the American Girl book series for many years. They were excited to see the company was releasing a new series based on some of their favorite historical characters. they love the face that the books are in a choose your own adventure format, This makes the story new and exciting each time they read it. We will be on the look out for all of the other books in the series as well.

American Girls has produced a new series of Beforever books. These books take the reader back in time to spend a day with the American Girls characters. The reader gets to choose which path she'll take and how the story will end. In A Brighter Tomorrow: My Journey with Julie the reader will travel back to the San Francisco of the 1970's and get a front row seat to all the changes happening at that time. This is a great way to kindle a love of reading and of history in grade school girls. This slim volume would be appropriate for 3rd grade level readers and up.