Prairie Songs

This is no "Little House" book. It's a haunting book, you keep thinking about it for a long time after you finish it. It did leave me with many un-answered questions, though. Is that a good thing? Would I care about un-answered questions if I didn't care about the characteres? It also made me question myself. How would I stand up to similar tragedies? I hope I would have the love and fortitude of Clara.

This book is very Willa Cather in its portrayal of the harshness of prairie life, painting death and despair in vivid strokes. I'm sure if I read it today, I would better understand the author's intent than I did when I was nine or ten years old and picked this up from the library because it looked like a companion to Little House on the Prairie. What I remember of this book is that the images of death disturbed and stuck with me (verbatim) for years. The writing and topics dealt with here do not seem appropriate for early elementary; yet the cover and page length make it doubtful a middle-schooler would go anywhere near this. I'm not sure who the book can be recommended to.

Prairie Songs is a tale of prairie life as seen through the eyes of a girl growing up in the almost barren plains of Nebraska in the 1800s. The book has some inclusion with poetry with the poem Eagle: A Fragment (Tennyson). The story has a dark side tale in which it presents not only the wonderful place the prairie is, but also the solitude it brings to new unsuspecting settlers.

Gripping, but too realistic and horrifying for kids. If I were the author, I would have turned this into a novel for adults. I won't keep this one.

This is admittedly a rather strange book. It's the story of a woman who hates the prairie and is driven crazy by it told from the point of view of a young girl who loves the prairie and has lived there her whole life. She's attracted to the woman's learning and delicacy, but is also very different. This book won a whole slew of awards, but it just doesn't seem like something most children will relate to.

Louisa and her family live in a sod house in Nebraska. A doctor and his pregnant wife, Emmaline, move to the prairie from New York. Prairie life is a lot harder for people who are not used to it so Louisa's family try to help the newcomers adjust. Emmaline's baby is a stillborn and she goes mad.

This book has harsh themes for children. However I love how beautiful prairie life is portrayed!

Classroom extension: Read during study of the states.

This book is about children, Lester and Louisa, who live on a Nebraska prairie.The book talk about the region there such as the miles of flat grasslands and the open sky. This would be good to tie into a unit on climate and terrain in certain areas because it talks about the prairie. It would be good to use with older grade levels because it is a chapter book. It can also be one that everyone has a copy to follow along with and the teacher reads while the students listen. This can be used for a project making the landscape of a certain place and presenting facts on what its like there. This can be done with model clay, on a poster board, a powerpoint or any other number of ways!