The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (published 1940) is a great tale of endurance and survival for the Ingalls family, pioneers in the brand new city of De Smet in the Dakota territory. During this historic winter, frequent blizzards lasting 3 or 4 days crippled towns and halted railway traffic, which means that De

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Taking place about forty-years after the Ingalls family settled in the Dakota territories, The Jumping Off Place by Marion Hurd McNeely (published 1929) tells a similar yet fictional pioneer tale. In this Newbery Medal runner-up for 1930, four orphaned children travel to the claim in the Dakota prairie that their dear Uncle Jim has set

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Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink is a 1930s Newbery Award Winner, based on the experiences of the author’s own grandmother. Caddie is a creative and active 11-year-old, resistant to the demands her nineteenth-century culture demands of her because she is a girl. In this fictionalized volume of adventures, Caddie’s fun occasionally brings her into

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I Walked to Zion by Susan Arrington Madsen (Deseret Book, 1994) is a delightful collection of first person accounts of Mormon pioneers who traveled across the American Great Plains to Utah from the late 1840s to 1860s. Although the volume is probably intended for adults to read, the engaging and interesting stories of the pioneers have such

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