Diary of An American Kid is a colorful journal that is ready to be filled with the imaginative thoughts of a grade school child. It is the perfect size to fit into a backpack so that the student can use it on the go. The book looks like a chapter book, but inside there are great treasures. The child has the opportunity to fill in the blanks with basic information, such as "I am ____ years old. I live in ________." There are other pages where the student completes such sentences as "Today we went to...," "My favorite thing about today was...," "My least favorite thing about today was...," and "Would I visit here again?" There are also unique prompts, such as "If I wrote a book it would be about..." and "What is your favorite kind of fruit?"

This would be a great book to take with you on a family vacation. Or you could use it for virtual travel. If you are studying a state via reading at home the students could use this book to write their reflections in.

My 10-year-old creative writing student loved this book. She had a place to write down her thoughts on places and things. She knows that years from now she will have a book that has her reflections as a 10-year-old girl. She would have preferred more introspective questions, but overall she loved the book. The graphics are colorful and patriotic. My younger daughter found the many "Today we went to..." pages to be too numerous for her liking. I think she would have preferred a few more blank pages. I loved that my daughter had a place to record all of her thoughts about her country. What a treasure she will have many years from now! We used it in our home as we "virtually" traveled to different states. I would have loved to use this when we were traveling through the states.

Diary of an American Kid is a great accompaniment to a trip through the states of the United States of America.

Product review by Maggi Beardsley, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, August 2011