READING LEVEL: 4.3 AR POINTS: 2.0
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I love the "I Survived" series for younger kids...true stories written with adventure and in a way they will enjoy while learning at the same time. This one I will probably purchase for my younger grandsons. It's a great American frontier story!

Eleven year old John Hale was a city kid from Chicago when, in September 1887, his family up and moved west to Prairie Creek, Dakota Territory, which wasn't quite a "state" yet. in hopes of a better living. The government, with the new Homestead Act in place, was issuing 160 acres to each family for FREE...if they were able to farm the land for five years.

John hated the cold and freezing winters and had to walk back and forth 1-1/2 miles from home to school each day with his younger sister, Frannie. There were only three other boys his age in the classroom and at first he didn't have any friends and felt like an outsider. But, one day the boys were talking about the "King Rattler" that all the kids knew about and talked about. They were going to try and be the heroes to kill it and actually invited John to join and help them. This little adventure helped to bond the boys.

Then winter came and it was as harsh as usual at -20 degrees. The kids all had to stay home from school for a week, but then had a sudden break in the weather. They woke up to 30° warm weather. It felt like summer. The kids got dressed fairly warm and headed off to school, excited to see their friends again. The sun was out and since it felt fairly warm, John and his sister, Frannie, left their scarves and mittens home.

But, while they were out at recess playing, the kids noticed an ominous datk gray cloud heading for them, and coming upon them pretty fast. It was billowing and growing closer and spread across the land. Before they knew it it was upon them...the temperature suddenly dropped and the storm came with a rumbling noise. The kids ran back into the schoolhouse. Day suddenly turned to night and the monster blizzard had the sound of a speeding train.

This blizzard was so strong that it shook the schoolhouse and broke windows out. They had almost burned up all the coal to try and keep warm when a group of men came to rescue the kids. They loaded them up in wagons to bring them to the safety of the hotel that was about 15 minutes away. But, something spooked the horse that was pulling the wagon that John and his three buddies were in and it became a runnaway wagon. They had to jump or else risk being crushed. These four boys ended up digging out the center of a huge hay bale and crawling in and survived the night out of the wind before they were found.

This storm was like a frozen hurricane with winds up to 70 mile per hour and was the worst snowstorm ever recorded at the time. Temperatures reached -40°. This storm was known as the "children's storm" because at least 100 of the 235 people that died were children.
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To learn more about this blizzard on Jaunary 12, 1888, there is an adult version, "The Children's Blizzard" by David Laskin, now on my To Read list . ( )

This children’s book will give kids an over-view of this disaster without being too scary. It certainly portrays the seriousness of the storm in all its fierceness. The main character is a young boy, who, along with his younger sister, are quite a likable children. Having come from Chicago, a big city, he can’t quite fit in with the rural boys. The author nicely shows how he eventually does. She also examines life on the prairie at that time, with all its hardships and problems. She touches on the grasshopper invasion, which adds much to the story. After the story concludes, the author includes some facts about the blizzard and prairie life, as well as a detailed bibliography for further study about blizzards and more. ( )

Mile a minute survival on the prairie -- like the little house books without most of the day-to-day context -- it's there, but there's also a whole lot of action. I like that these are well researched, that Tarshis shares that research in the back of the book, and that she picks really interesting topics. She's great at very quickly establishing a sympathetic character as well. ( )

I survived formula:
Take a protagonist with minor, inconvenient problems.
Give them a major disaster in which they fail to suffer in any meaningful way and come out (more or less) just fine.
Disaster puts their previous problems in perspective.
BUT, rather than disaster make them stop caring about paltry issues, it SOLVES their problems FOR them! ( )

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