Pioneer Girl

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Pioneer Girl

A True Story of Growing Up on the Prairie

Andrea Warren
With a new afterword by the author

104 pages
33 photographs

Paperback

September 2009

978-0-8032-2526-8

$16.95 Add to Cart
about author bio praise table of contents media awards

About the Book

Pioneer Girl is the true story of Grace McCance Snyder. In 1885, when Grace was three, she and her family became homesteaders on the windswept prairie of central Nebraska. They settled into a small sod house and hauled their water in barrels. Together they endured violent storms, drought, blizzards, and prairie fires. Despite the hardships and dangers, Grace loved her life on the prairie. Weaving Grace’s story into the history of America’s heartland, award-winning author Andrea Warren writes not just of one spirited girl but of all the children who homesteaded with their families in the late 1800s, sharing the heartbreaks and joys of pioneer life.

Author Bio

Andrea Warren is the author of several highly acclaimed children’s books, including Orphan Train Rider: One Boy’s True Story, winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Outstanding Nonfiction; Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps, a Robert F. Sibert Award Honor Book; and Escape from Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy, a Booklist Editors’ Choice.

Praise

“Grace’s story relates hardships and hilarity in a compelling mix. . . . This is a fine personal portrait of one woman’s life and a good read. Excellent-quality archival photos, many of Grace’s own family, enhance the well-documented text.”—School Library Journal (starred review)

“[Pioneer Girl] tells the riveting story of life on the prairie and the determination of the families who settled there.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A nonfiction parallel to Laura Ingalls Wilder stories, filled with the gritty details of a settler’s life and told with a smooth storytelling style.”—Horn Book

“Every year my fifth grade students embark on a journey ‘out west’ with Andrea Warren’s Pioneer Girl. The book’s wonderful details and compelling characters make for a high-interest story as readers learn about the homesteaders’ experiences and what it took to settle the prairie.”—Sharon Story, teacher at B.D. Lee Elementary School in Gaffney, South Carolina

“An excellent addition to units on the westward movement or for fans of pioneer stories.”—Booklist

Table of Contents

Introduction
ONE: A Home in the Promised Land
TWO: Settling In
THREE: Getting By
FOUR: Fire and Wind
FIVE: Sunup to Sundown
SIX: Pioneer Women
SEVEN: Blizzards and Grasshoppers
EIGHT: Sociable Settlers
NINE: The Storm
TEN: Hard Times
ELEVEN: Grace Grows Up
TWELVE: The Quilt Lady of Nebraska
Afterword
For Further Information
Acknowledgments and Photo Credits
Index

Awards

- Recipient of the Midland Authors Award
- Golden Sower Award Finalist
- Scholastic Book Club Selection
- South Carolina Association of School Librarians' Children's Book Award
- Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children from the National Council of Teachers of English
 

 

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