Prairie Lotus

Park, Linda Sue. Prairie Lotus. Boston: Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.
Hanna and her father move to Dakota Territory in the spring of 1880. Her mother has died from injuries incurred during anti-Chinese riots in Los Angeles, and her father – a dressmaker – wants to start afresh in a new place where they will be safe. Hanna is supposed to stay out of sight. People tend to be cruel to half-Chinese and half-white people, and her father – originally from Tennessee – wants to shield his daughter and protect his business prospects. But Hanna wants to go to school. She’s a teenager now and has dreams of someday earning a graduation diploma. Will her father allow her to attend school? Will the townspeople allow her to mingle with their children? Will she make any friends in this new place? At the end of the book, Park explains why she modelled the setting of her story after the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories and how she, herself, has faced many of the racist attacks depicted in her novel. This 247-page award-winning book, printed in an easy-to-read font with widely spaced lines, is highly recommended for readers 11 to 14 years old.

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Laura Ingalls Wilder

McDonough, Yona Zeldis. Little Author in the Big Woods. New York: Christy Ottaviano Books / Henry Holt and Company, 2014. 

Little House on the Prairie is one of the first novels of childhood. The experiences of Laura’s family in the series of ‘Little House’ books have formed many people’s picture of frontier life. But who was Laura Ingalls Wilder?
This 157-page biography portrays the life of an energetic girl who grew up to be an enterprising writer, a woman who never lost her sense of adventure. The relatively large font and widely spaced lines will appeal to children being introduced to the Little House books for the first time. The glossary, several recipes, and directions for playing games and making toys at the end of the book will be useful for teachers designing units of study. The biography itself, though, will also be appreciated by older readers who fondly remember Laura’s stories of her childhood in 19th century America. 

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