Heart Songs: The Intimate Diaries of Young Girls

by Laurel Holliday

Sara Gavin, the owner of a small art gallery in Phoenix, Arizona, falls in love with Joseph Highrock, a renowned artist who asked to paint her portrait

Genres: Nonfiction

181 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Laurel Holliday, formerly a college teacher, editor, and psychotherapist, now writes full time in Seattle.

She is the award-winning author of the Children of Conflict series. The three volumes were collected and abridged in the Archway Paperback edition titled Why Do They Hate Me?: Young Lives Caught in War and Conflict. Dreaming in Color, Living in Black and White is an abridged edition of Holliday's fourth title in the Children of Conflict series, Children of the Dream: Our Own Stories of Growing Up Black in America.

Laurel Holliday is also the author of Heartsongs, an international collection of young girls' diaries, which won a Best Book for Young Adults Award from the American Library Association.

Reviews

[Jessica Scofield · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book so much that I've kept the copy I read in 1984 all these years. I read it when I was 11. It was the first time I realized that there were girls my age from all over the world, from all different time periods, who had felt the same way I did: passionate, insecure, ambitious...

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of girls' diaries (or rather, excerpts thereof), this is a great little book. When I was younger I loved fictionalized diaries (i.e. The Royal Diaries and Dear Canada). This is of course even better, because it's actually written by girls who lived in the 1800s/1900s. There's even one diary from the 1530s. Although I wish the snippets chosen had been longer, what is included in the book covers thoughts on marriage, love, growing up, sexuality (Gretchen's quest to learn about the birds and the bees is entertaining) and it's interesting to see that, despite the fact that the environment these girls grew up in was so different from our own, their thoughts are still quite modern & their feelings easy to relate to.

The author used books that were largely out-of-print; unfortunately it seems the same fate has befallen this book, given the lack of ratings here on Goodreads. If you can find it I encourage you to read it. It provides an interesting bridge to the past (lord knows my pet peeve is people who act as though everyone who lived back then was stupid and their lives 'empty')

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always kept a journal, but this collection of excerpts from diaries encouraged influenced my writing significantly. Also, this is where I discovered Anais Nin. Her writing has been important to me all my life.