PINTSIZED PIONEERS:
Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time
By Preston Lewis & Harriet Kocher Lewis
Young Adult / Nonfiction / History
Publisher: Bariso Press
Pages: 184
Publication Date: September 24, 2024
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*** SYNOPSIS ***
Children tread lightly through the pages of Old West history. Pintsized Pioneers: Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time gives frontier children their due for all the work they did to help their families survive. Even at early ages, the youngsters helped families make ends meet and handled chores that today seem unbelievable. Written for today’s young adults, Pintsized Pioneers offers lessons on frontier history and on the value of work for contemporary youth.
In 1850 adolescents 16 and under accounted for 46 percent of the national population, making them an important labor force in settling the country. Pintsized Pioneers examines their tasks and toils starting with the chores on the trail west. Children assisted in providing fuel and water on the trail and at home when they settled down. In their new locations the young ones helped grow food, make clothing for the entire family and assist with the housekeeping in primitive dwellings.
These pintsized pioneers took on farm and ranch chores as young as six, some going on cattle drives at eight years of age. Even Old West town tykes, who enjoyed more career possibilities, helped their folks survive as well. In the end, many pintsized pioneers pitched in to help their families make ends meet. Difficult as their lives might have been, the lessons those children learned handling chores helped them and their country in the years ahead. Those pintsized lessons have contemporary applications to the youth of today.
Targeted at young adults, Pintsized Pioneers is written at a ninth-grade reading level and includes a supplementary glossary. Even so, Pintsized Pioneers is an eye-opener for adult readers as well.
CLICK TO PURCHASE:
Bariso Press | Amazon | B&N | Bookshop.org | Books-A-Million
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*** REVIEW ***
First off, I have to say that I have always looked forward to reading books by Preston Lewis. The humorous western series based on the memoirs of H.H. Lomax, were fun to read and so entertaining.
This book, while interesting for the historical content, was not nearly as entertaining. Not that all books have to be gripping, but there should always be an element of engagement with the reader on more than just an intellectual level, even with nonfiction. That engagement was there in the early chapters about the various ways people traveled West and the hardships they faced, especially because the reader sees that from the point of view of the children, but I felt that engagement waning just a bit as I read on.
Some ensuing chapters were overwritten and could have benefited from cutting some of the repetitive phrases and information. There were sections of overstating the obvious, such as this quote, “… just as making soap was a long and tedious task, so was using that soap to do laundry. Living in a prairie dwelling made of the same soil that the family worked in the fields meant that clothes quickly grew filthy.”
That paragraph comes after several previous mentions of how quickly clothes got dirty; as well as repeating a few times the fact that families that lived in sod homes had to deal with the mud created when the roof leaked, and the “people walked around in the mud for days even after the rain quit.”
A lot has been written about what life was like for adults during those pioneering days, but probably not so much about how young people fared. Pintsized Pioneers fills that gap by focusing on all the ways the children contributed during trips West, settling on the plains for farming, or going all the way to Oregon.
Included in the book are details and stories about children as young as two taking on chores that would normally be done by an adult, like tending to livestock. There was Richard in Bandera, Texas who started riding at age four and soon had to take over tending to the herd of cattle when his father died. By the time he was eight, Richard was roping and branding along with grown men.
In the late 1800s there was an interesting debate in the Des Moines Homestead newspaper about whether farm boys or city boys were best fit for life because of the way they grew up. The authors included a section about the work that young people did in towns, helping their fathers with various businesses in stores or newspaper offices, showing that children worked hard in the towns as well as on the farms and ranches.
Those stories and quotes from the young people are what kept me reading, especially because there’s a nice balance of comments from girls and boys. Some girls did a lot more than help their mothers in the garden and the house, and I appreciate the approach to inclusiveness that the authors took in the research and the writing.
The fact that the authors did detailed research is clearly evidence throughout the whole book. If you’d like to learn more about these amazing kids and what they accomplished, pick up a copy of Pintsized Pioneers. It’s a wonderful history lesson.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*** ABOUT THE AUTHORS ***
Preston Lewis and Harriet Kocher Lewis co-authored three books in the “Magic Machine Series” published by Bariso Press: Devotionals from a Soulless Machine, Jokes from a Humorless Machine, and Recipes from a Tasteless Machine. The couple resides in San Angelo, Texas.
Preston Lewis has published more than 50 fiction and nonfiction works. The author and historian’s books include traditional Westerns, historical novels, comic Westerns, young adult books, and historical accounts. In 2021 he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for his literary accomplishments.
His writing honors include two Spur Awards from Western Writers of America and three Elmer Kelton Awards from the West Texas Historical Association. He has received ten Will Rogers Medallion Awards, and in 2024, he earned an inaugural Literary Global Independent Author Award in the Western Nonfiction category for Cat Tales of the Old West.
He is a past president of Western Writers of America and the West Texas Historical Association, which named him a fellow in 2016.
WEBSITE ◆ LINKEDIN ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ X/TWITTER
AMAZON ◆ FACEBOOK ◆ GOODREADS
Harriet Kocher Lewis is the award-winning editor and publisher of Bariso Press. Titles she has edited have been honored with Will Rogers Medallion Awards, Spur Finalist designations, and Independent Author Awards.
Lewis concluded her 26-year physical therapy career as the inaugural clinical coordinator for the physical therapy program at Angelo State University, where she taught technical writing and wrote or edited numerous scientific papers as well as a chapter in a clinical education textbook.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CLICK TO VISIT THE LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE TOUR PAGE
FOR DIRECT LINKS TO EACH BLOG PARTICIPATING IN THIS TOUR.
blog tour services provided by
