My Name is America

The Journal Of Otto Peltonen

A Finnish Immigrant, Hibbing MN,

1905

Written by William Durbin

Reading level: Ages 9-12

Hardcover: 171 pages

Publisher: Scholastic Inc.

Language: English

ISBN: 978-0439092548

Leaving the home that he has always known, fifteen year old Otto departs from Finland with his mother and two sisters. The family is headed to Duluth, Minnesota where they will be reunited with their father, an iron miner. When the family finally reaches Hibbing, Minnesota, the streets are not lined with gold as they had heard. Instead they find that everything is coated in a red iron ore dust. This new home is not what Otto and his sisters had dreamed of. It is worse than the home they had left. After a few months of livingin in Minnesota, Otto must start working in the iron mines with his father. Follow Otto through the trials he and his family face including a new home, a new language, and the unionization of the mines.

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