Amelia Lost

This was the first nonfiction book I have read in a while, and I really enjoyed it.  Although most Newbery books are fiction, I try to read nonfiction books because they are eligible for the award as well.  I found the Navigating History section (basically preface) particularly interesting.  The author of this book had to dig the truth about Amelia's life out from under tons of lies that she told about her past that couldn't possibly have been true.  It was interesting thinking about the ways celebrities were thought about then and now and what it was deemed acceptable to know about a famous person's life.  And I found it cool that no one looked up facts about things that celebrities told them to see if they were true because they didn't have a way to do it.  It would be so much easier to have been famous then than it is now because people trusted you.  One of my other favorite parts of this book was that there is a section about the week of her disappearance that is a page or two or three long and then a longer section about her life in chronological order, starting with her as an infant and toddler and ending at the point in time when the short disappearance sections began.  I felt this was a great way to set up the book and looked forward to the short sections that broke up the facts.  There wasn't a single thing that I disliked about this book and I think that lots of people would enjoy reading it.

Rating:  *****