This is the story of a quaker girl who refects on the experiences she faced growing up in the Delaware River Valley in Pennsylvania and her capture by the Indians in 1763. The style of writing was that of a diary and connects the reader to times throughout our history. It is a great read for 4-6th graders that allows them to see what living in the past was like for different people.

Living in Pennsylvania's Delaware Valley in 1763, thirteen-year-old Catharine "Caty" Logan's biggest concern is getting one of the boys at school, Jess Owen, to notice her without becoming vain - a sin for Quakers like Caty and her family. But after a group of settlers massacre the inhabitants of a peaceful Indian village, Caty is terrified that the Indians will retaliate by attacking settlers. Her worst fears come true when she and her little brother Thomas are capture by a band of Lenape Indians and taken to their camp. Even though Caty is adopted into an Indian family and treated with kindness, she rebels against her captors every chance she has. It takes the love of a young warrior, Snow Hunter, once a captive like Caty, but who chose to remain with the Indians, for Caty to understand that the Indians are people just like herself, and she finds a sense of belonging. The story was told in the form of Caty's diary. Mary Pope Osborne did a wonderful job of bringing the language, customs, and events of the 1760s to life. ( )

One of the Dear America books, Standing in the Light is written as the diary of a young Quaker girl in 1763 Pennsylvania. After a few entries setting up her life as a settler in the Delaware valley, she and her brother are captured on the way to school by Lenape Indians. She is inducted into the tribe as a replacement for an Indian girl who was killed by measles and the entries detail her adaption to a new way of life. It's a nice enough book, though Lois Lenski's Indian Captive blows it out of the water as far as quality is concerned. Whereas Indian Captive entranced me, with this book I was always aware that I was reading a dramatization, a collection of true events that happened to a variety of people. Standing in the Light is worth checking out, but only as an introduction to this particular aspect of Native-Colonist relations. I think the real historical accounts would be much more interesting.
--J. ( )