Agriculture in American History
Pre-Colonial / Early
American / Civil
War and Slavery / Immigrants / Pioneers / Wild
West / World War II
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Brandt, Keith, and Sergio Martinez, Cabeza
de Vaca: New World Explorer, Troll, 1993.
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Johnson, Sylvia A., Tomatoes, Potatoes, Corn, and Beans: How
the Foods of the Americas Changed Eating Around the World, Atheneum,
1996. (Grades 6-8)
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Early American |
Bowen, Gary, Stranded
at Plimoth Plantation, 1626, Sagebrush, 1998. (Grades 4-7)
The boat carrying
indentured servant Christopher Sears, 13, to Jamestown, Va., runs
into heavy weather off the coast of New England and is abandoned.
Christopher is billeted at the Brewster house, where he takes to
the daily routines of family and colony. The book is written in
the form of a journal, and Christopher relates scads of fascinating
tidbits, from food to funerals, entertainment to worship, crops
to architecture. He gossips, attends court, falls in love. And in
April he has one of his thrice-yearly baths. The story ends with
a satisfying and believable twist. Bowen's reputation rests secure
as the crafter of scrupulously researched, beautifully illustrated
stories.
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Cobb, Mary, The
Quilt Block History of Pioneer Days, Philbrook, 1995. (Grades
K-3)
Easy-to-make
papercraft quilt projects show how the daily lives and experiences
of the pioneers came to be reflected in the quilts they made. |
Ichord, Loretta Frances, Hasty Pudding, Johnnycakes, and
Other Good Stuff: Cooking in Colonial America, Millbrook,
1998. (Grades K-3)
Facts about America's culinary heritage covering such topics as
manners, food preservation, and culinary staples such as corn.
Ichord also includes a section on regional diversity and one she
calls "Soul Cooking," which focuses on the unique cuisine
created by slaves. Recipes for popular dishes, updated for modern
kitchens and accompanied by clear directions and discussion of
how the same dish would have been prepared by colonial cooks, conclude
each chapter. Children will need adult help when they prepare the
food, but they'll have fun learning the history and making such
dishes as johnnycakes, pumpkin soup, and, of course, hasty pudding. |
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Hospkinson, Deborah, Sweet Clara and the
Freedom Quilt, Knopf, 1993. (Grades K-3)
As a seamstress in the Big House, Clara dreams
of a reunion with her Momma, who lives on another plantation -
and even of running away to freedom. Then she overhears two slaves
talking about the Underground Railroad. In a flash of inspiration,
Clara sees how she can use the cloth in her scrap bag to make a
map of the land - a freedom quilt - that no master will ever suspect. |
McMullan, Margaret, How I Found the Strong,
Houghton Mifflin, 2005. (Grades 6-12)
Ten-year-old Frank Russell is left to run his family's
small farm when his father and brother go off to fight in the Civil
War. |
Rutberg, Becky, Mary Lincoln's Dressmaker,
Elizabeth Keckley's Remarkable Rise from Slave to White House
Confidante, Walker, 1995 (Young Adult).
Born a slave in 1818, Mary Keckley endured 37 years
of abuse, including forced sexual relations (and a resulting pregnancy)
before buying freedom for herself and her son. Once free, she used
her sewing skills to become one of Washington D.C.'s most successful
dressmakers. Then she closed her dress shop to care for the first
lady after Lincoln's assassination. |
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Connor, Leslie, and Mary Azarian, Miss Bridie
Chose a Shovel, Houghton
Mifflin, 2005. (Grades K-3)
A young immigrant girl selects a shovel to accompany her on a
voyage to America in 1856. The shovel provides subsistence, shelter
and safety as it transforms the land and enriches her life. |
Denenberg, Barry, So
Far From Home: The Diary of Mary Driscol, An Irish Mill Girl, Lowell
Massachusetts, 1847, Scholastic, 1996. (Grades 4-7)
Fourteen-year-old
Mary Driscoll and her family have lived in terrible poverty in the
Irish countryside every since the potato famine began several years
ago. When Mary is offered a chance to join her aunt and older sister
in America, she jumps at the chance to seek a better life for herself.
But after a long, stormy, and miserable ocean voyage, Mary arrives
in America to find that it is nothing like she expected. She takes
a job in a textile mill in Lowell, Massachusetts, where she is scorned
by most of the American workers and expected to work long hours
under terrible, unsafe conditions. There are few bright spots in
this account of the life faced by many girls in New England cities
during the mid-nineteenth century, and most of what happened to
the fictional character of Mary happened to various girls who lived
back then and worked in factories and mills. |
McCully, Emily Arnold, The Bobbin Girl, Dial,
1996. (Grades K-3)
When her mother's income from the boardinghouse
no longer covers their expenses, 10-year-old Rebecca helps out
by working as a bobbin girl at the local textile mill. The young
women who board with Mrs. Putney endure the mill's bad air, loud
machinery, high injury rate, and low wages in the hope of improving
their lot, but when the mill owners threaten to lower their wages,
the mill workers stage a "turnout," refusing to work. Although
the protest fails, young Rebecca is proud of doing the right thing
and vows to carry on the struggle. A Lowell, Massachusetts, textile
mill in the 1830s may be an unlikely setting for a picture book,
even one for older readers, but McCully weaves historical facts
and fictional characters into an intriguing story. The author's
note details the background, incidents, and people who inspired
the book. Beautifully composed watercolor paintings give a vivid
impression of America in the 1830s and bring the period to life.
A useful book for history units. |
Nixon, Joan, A Family Apart, Bantam, 1996. (Grades 4-7)
When their mother can no longer support them, six siblings are
sent by the Children's Aid Society of New York City to live with
farm families in Missouri in 1860. |
Paterson, Katherine, Lyddie, Lodestar,
1994. (Young Adult)
Lyddie Worthen must decide whether to risk losing
her job running a loom at a dusty Massachusetts factory--a job
she has taken to earn enough money to reunite her family--by protesting
the poor working conditions. |
Pioneers |
Anderson, William, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography,
Harper Collins, 1992. (Grades 4-7)
Details the adult life, as well as the childhood, of one of America's
most beloved authors. |
Cobb, Mary, The Quilt Block History of Pioneer Days, Philbrook,
1995. (Grades K-3)
Easy-to-make papercraft quilt projects show how the daily lives
and experiences of the pioneers came to be reflected in the quilts
they made. |
Greenwood, Barbara, and Heather Collins, A
Pioneer Sampler: The Daily Life of a Pioneer Family in 1840, Ticknor
Fields, 1999 (Grades 4-7).
Combining fact and fiction, this book offers a
window into the lives of pioneers. Greenwood offers fictional episodes
about one family, the Robertsons, but between chapters about their
adventures' there are sections giving background information about
the period. In one story Meg goes to the general store to buy ribbons
but decides to spend her money to help a neighbor who can't afford
the postage due on a letter. The next few pages show what might
be found at a village store; explain how to make a balance scale
from yogurt containers and a coat hanger; discuss the post office
and letter writing during pioneer days (including the information
that the U.S. began using postage stamps in 1847); and give a recipe
for homemade ink. |
Hearne, Betsy, Seven Brave Women, Greenwillow,
1997. (Grades K-3)
In a world where history is often seen through the prism of war,
Hearne introduces seven women of peace who also shaped history--through
their creativeness, imagination, and, yes, bravery. |
Larsen, Kirby, Hattie Big Sky, Delacorte, 2006. (Young Adult)
Sixteen-year-old orphan
Hattie Brooks leaves Iowa and travels to a Montana homestead inherited
from her uncle. She has less
than a year to fence and cultivate the land in order to keep it.
Chapters open with short articles
that Hattie writes for an Iowa newspaper or her lively letters to
a friend and possible beau who is in the military in France. The
authentic first-person narrative,
portrays Hattie's struggles as a young woman with limited options,
a homesteader facing terrible odds, and a loyal citizen confused
about the war and the local anti-German bias that endangers her new
friends. Larson, whose great-grandmother homesteaded alone in Montana,
read dozens of homesteaders' journals and based scenes in the book
on real events. |
Levine, Ellen, If You Traveled West in a
Covered Wagon, Scholastic, 1992. (Grades 4-7)
A question-and-answer format teaches young readers
a multitude of facts about life on the Oregon Trail in the 1840s. |
Sanders, Scott R., Warm as Wool, Bradbury,
1992. (Grades K-3)
Living in the Ohio wilderness in 1804, Betsy Ward
sets out to build a flock of sheep and, despite predation, illness,
and death, manages to create warm clothing for her children. |
Stewart, George, Pioneers Go West, Random
House, 1999. (Grades 4-7)
Seventeen-year-old Moses Schallenberger wanted
to go to California. In 1844, he joined a wagon train to do just
that. There was only one problem: Nobody had ever made it to California
by wagon before. For a year, he and 50 others struggled through
high mountain passes and across wide rushing rivers, enduring dangerous
encounters with Indians and buffalo, inclement weather, difficult
terrain, near-starvation and disaster. Ultimately, Moses and his
friends succeeded - becoming the first pioneers to cross the Sierra
Nevadas by wagon. Today, the trail they blazed is a major route
into California. |
Stine, Megan, The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pioneer
Girl, Dell, 1992. (Grades 4-7)
A biography of the author of the beloved "Little House" books
describes the Ingalls's life in the woods, their nine moves in
a period of three years, the hardships they faced, and Laura's
later years as a writer. |
Woodruff, Elvira, Dear Levi: Letters From
the Overland Trail, Knopf, 1996. (Grades 4-7)
Twelve-year-old orphan Austin sets out with the
Morrisons from Pennsylvania to the Oregon Territory to claim his
dead pa's land. His younger brother, Levi, stays behind. In his
letters Austin details the days with the wagon train, filled with
commonplace events and predictable problems as well as hazardous
escapades that keep the adrenaline pumpingaccidents, disease, death,
Indian trouble, storms, and fights among the various families.
He shares the friendships he makes with other youngsters and with
adults. Although the adventures (both positive and negative) are
similar to those in other books about wagon train travel, the epistolary
format and character development offer solid reading. A clear map
of the Overland Trail in 1851 begins the book, and double-page-spread
pencil drawings appear throughout. |
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Durham, David Anthony, Gabriel's Story, Doubleday, 2001
(Young Adult)
Set in the 1870s, the novel tells the tale of Gabriel Lynch, an
African American youth who settles with his family in the plains
of Kansas. Dissatisfied with the drudgery of homesteading and growing
increasingly disconnected from his family, Gabriel forsakes the
farm for a life of higher adventure. Thus begins a forbidding trek
into a terrain of austere beauty, a journey begun in hope, but
soon laced with danger and propelled by a cast of brutal characters. |
Fleischman, Sid, Jim
Ugly, Greenwillow, 1992. (Grades 4-7)
Part timber
wolf, Jim Ugly is a proud and aloof one-man dog. And that man is
Jake's father, an actor in the raffish world of the frontier West.
When he suddenly disappears, the boy and the dog are thrown into
an uneasy alliance on a wild, helter-skelter journey to the Sierra
Nevada mountains and San Francisco. |
Fox, Dan,
and Alan Axelrod, Songs of the Wild West, Simon and Schuster,
1991.
Panoramic in
scope, the songs - 45 in all - coupled with the works of art from
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Buffalo Bill Historical Center,
reflect every facet of life during one of the most exciting periods
in our nation's history. Featured works include paintings and sculpture
by Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, Georgia O'Keeffe, and
others. |
Katz, William Loren,
Black Women of the Old West, Atheneum, 1995 (Grades 4-7).
Using
primary sources and featuring dozens of black-and-white archival
photographs and reproductions, Katz recounts stories of African
American women who made the journey west and illuminates the
times in which they lived and their reasons for going. Some
women of color escaped west from slavery. Others sued for freedom
after being taken there by their owners. Still others came
as mail-order brides. Many black women flourished on the frontier,
where they found more opportunities for education and better
paying jobs.
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McPherson, James M., Into the West,
Atheneum, 2006. (Grades 4-8)
The book is divided into 39 chapters, most consisting
of a single-page essay about a topic, paired with an attractive,
full-page period illustration or photo, some of which are in color.
Each page of text also has a related Quick Facts sidebar. Many
early sections discuss the upheavals and difficulties of Reconstruction,
including the debate over presidential versus congressional reconstruction,
the Ku Klux Klan, and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Later
chapters cover the Homestead Act, cattle drives, outlaws, and the
forced removal of Native American tribes. |
Miller, Brandon Marie, Buffalo
Gals: Women of the Old West, Lerner, 1995. (Grades 4-7)
Miller's book acquaints
children with a historically accurate picture of the daily life
of 19th Century women of the western frontier. Without neglecting
the story of the Native American women who lived on the frontier,
Miller catches both the bone-wearying labor and the excitement
that sometimes made living in the West worthwhile. She augments
her text with excerpts from journals and memoirs as well as photographs
from regional archives, which are especially effective because
the images are not familiar ones.
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Myers, Walter Dean, The Righteous
Revenge of Artemis Bonner, Harper Collins, 1992. (Grades 4-7)
In 1880, 15-year-old Artemis
Bonner, an African-American New Yorker, travels to Tombstone,
Arizona, to avenge the murder of his Uncle Ugly and to find his
uncle's hidden gold stake. Artemis chases the murderous scalawag
from Mexico to Alaska and back again before a showdown on the
exact spot where Uncle Ugly met his untimely demise. A 1993 ALA
Best Book for Young Adults.
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Ross, Stewart, Fact or Fiction: Cowboys, Copper Beech,
1995.
Profiles the legendary heroes of the American West, including
accounts of the exploits of Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley, Wild Bill
Hickock, and other famous figures. |
Savage, Candace, Cowgirls, Tenspeed, 1996.
Savage provides a fine history of the cowgirl, exploring the lives
of women in the American West and blending historical review with
excerpts from journals and over 100 images from archives and private
collections of cowgirls in action. Enjoy a pleasing blend of visual
excitement and historical lore. |
Schlissel, Lillian, Black Frontiers: A History of African
American Heroes in the Old West, Simon and Schuster for Young
Readers, 2000. (Grades 4-7)
Lillian Schlissel provides exciting coverage of black frontiersmen,
a group neglected by many historians. Photographs and pictures
dating from 1852 to 1948 show black men prospecting for gold, riding
bucking broncos, and serving in the military. The author also covers
three courageous black women: Stagecoach Mary, Mary Ellen Pleasant,
and Biddy Mason. Snakes, sports, and storms are just a few of the
many interesting details included in this history book. |
Stotter, Mike, Wild West, Kingfisher,
1998. (Grades 4-7)
An in-depth exploration of the Old West, from the
first settlers to the last of the buffalo, and the colorful characters
that populated the western frontier. |
World War II
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Paulsen, Gary, The
Quilt, Random House, 2005. (Grades 3-8)
A young boy learns the stories of his Norwegian American family
as told through a quilt created by women left at home during wartime
in 1944. |
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