Coming to America: The Story of Immigration by Betsy Maestro (1996) is the dream story, illustrated by Susannah Ryan’s sanitized pictures of a multicultural community. It describes every person in America as an immigrant or descendant of one. “American Indians, called ‘Native Americans’, are distant relatives of the ancient hunters who arrived in North America so very long ago.”
The story is a chronological description of the immigrants who arrived from different countries at different times. They tended to settle in communities of their own. Eventually, westward expansion drove out the Indians. I didn’t know that in the 1900s immigrants who had permanent health problems and could not work were sent back to their native countries. There’s a single page to acknowledge the arrival of African slaves. And a note that Chinese settlers helped build the transcontinental railroad. “It isn’t easy to start a new life in an unfamiliar country. . . The jobs they must take are often hard, with long hours. Sadly, new arrivals are often poorly treated by other Americans just because they look or act differently.”
Ryan begins and ends the book with two page spreads of multicultural events in which diversity is celebrated.
