My 5-year-old daughter and I finished reading the Little House on the Prairie books, and were looking for something similar: historical fiction with a strong girl character. I looked through a couple of the American Girl books at the library, but chose Josefina mostly because my daughter is Latina and liked the idea of a protagonist who looks like her. I like Josefina (she makes pretty good decisions, behaves well almost all the time), but the writing is a little predictable. My daughter enjoyed them, but for both of us, they lacked the greatness of the Ingalls Wilder series we had just finished.