Don’t Tell the Girls

Don’t Tell the Girls, a family memoir written by Patricia Reilly Giff, tells Giff’s story of how she struggled to find out more about her family. As immigrants from Ireland to the U.S., Giff’s paternal grandmother’s family relocated in Brooklyn. She starts by using stories from her maternal grandmother and other family members, and then goes to libraries in search of her family’s roots. According to family stories, her paternal grandmother’s father, Michael, left Ireland to find work in America and later sent his wife and their twelve children money for the trip to America. When his family arrived, Michael was not there waiting for them. Giff learns that her grandmother’s mother left Michael in Ireland because of his gambling problem; she took their twelve children with her. The story about Michael ‘disappearing’ and not being there when the family arrived was fabricated. After a lot time spent laboring to find out the truth about her family, Giff was finally able to come to some conclusion.

The author of this book has also written numerous other children’s books, but I have never read any of them. After reading it, I would love to read some of her other books to see how the events described in this book influence her writing.

I chose this book when I was in the library looking for a biography to read. I had picked it up once before but decided not to get it that time. When I saw it again this time, I decided I had to read it. The cover intrigued me; it has an old picture of a woman on it, and it looks like it could be a photo album or some other family keepsake. Adding to the feel of the book as being a photo album, there are pictures of the author or her family scattered throughout the book. The edges of the pages are also torn and uneven, much like the edges of The Tale of Despereaux. This lends to the feeling of the book as being old and part of the family’s history.

I made a really personal connection to this story because, like the author, my family has a bit of a family secret that my grandparents unearthed when they got really into genealogy. They found out that my grandmother’s mother had been born into an at least somewhat Native American family. That made my great-grandmother at least some part Native American, but she had never told anyone about it before. Her family had changed their name to a more “American” one and had moved to a new town to avoid persecution for being Native Americans. No one knew this until my grandmother found some records with their names listed among the members of the Monacan Indian tribe.

This was a great, quick read. I would recommend it to be read to complement other books by Patricia Reilly Giff in order to get a feel for how her experiences influenced her writing.