Good-Bye for Today: The Diary of a Young Girl at Sea

In the book Good-Bye For Today the Roops capture the voice of a nine year old girl name Laura. Laura was grown up in the Sandwich Islands, which we now call Hawaii. She's on her way whale hunting with her family and some sailors. They ride a ship call the Monticello a kind of ship for whale hunting. On the way Laura has to write a diary of what she sees. Even though she doesn't want to her mother says she must. With the help of sailors they try to survive in the cold Arctic. Laura never seen an Eskimo and she can't wait to see one. They try to get through terrible storms and huge blocks of ice. Even though they know not everyone on the ship will survive, they stay together as a team, taking care of each other. Will they survive in the Arctic? Well to find out read Good-Bye For Today! This is a great book for anyone who wants to learn about whale hunting or about a girl and her life. I would recommend this book to anyone.

Nine-year-old Laura, daughter of a whaling captain, has never even seen her parents' home in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She was born on the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii) and has lived most of her life there. But now, her father has decided that the whole family will join him on this voyage home to Massachusetts. So Laura, her mother, and her seven-year-old brother board her father's ship and sail north to the Arctic, where they must face excitement, danger, and long days of boredom before they can return home. This book featured lovely drawings and was told through Laura's diary entries. Laura's character was based on two real daughters of whaling captains, Laura Jernengan and Mary Williams. This is a good book for younger readers interested in historical fiction.

This book is based on the true life experiences of two girls who accompanied their whaling families aboard whaling vessels at the end of the ninteenth century. Their experiences are combined in this fictional journal chronicling a character's life at sea.The girl's voice is vivid and real, her experiences easy to imagine.The illustrations sometimes try to look like a child's ink sketches in a diary and sometimes are double-page color depictions of incidents in the book.I think the placement of the glossary at the beginning is great. I enjoyed the author's note at the end also.