“I Am Sure Glad I Was Not Born in the 30s”: Multigenerational Reactions to Booky’s Great Depression

Bernice Thurman Hunter’s Booky trilogy depicts the economic hardships of a white, working-class girl nicknamed Booky who lived in Toronto, Canada, in the Great Depression. This article analyzes hundreds of letters sent to Hunter from two cohorts of readers: adults who grew up in the 1930s and school-age children coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s. The adult letters brim with details of their own Depression-era childhoods, while young readers express shock at how difficult things were in 1930s and compare Booky’s experiences to their own challenges and privileges. The letters’ revelations demonstrate how readers used a piece of historical fiction to grapple with the past—be it their own childhoods or the history of childhood.