about the book
Twelve-year-old Mavis Elizabeth Betterly, known as May B., is sent fifteen miles away from her prairie home by her cash-light parents. “Just until Christmas!” her father assures her. Mr. Oblinger, a young farmer, has just married a girl a little older than Mavis, and needs help with the care of his house.
May doesn’t understand why, and in short free-verse lines voices her frustration—“Why not Hiram? I think, / but I already know: / boys are necessary.” She is also anxious about missing so much school and getting behind in her reading, which she has a problem with already (an undiagnosed problem which is probably dyslexia).
Things are going okay, all things considering, until the winter months start approaching. Mrs. Oblinger, a city girl by birth, runs off home to Ohio, and Mr. Oblinger follows her, leaving May behind without a thought. While May is relieved at not having to do so much work anymore, she begins feeling the loneliness and the approaching snow—suddenly there is a blizzard, and she is trapped in a small sod house out on the prairie.
Now all she can do is wait for her father to come get her. Meantime she works on her reading, but her food supplies are running low, and Christmas is still a long way away…
about the author
Caroline Starr Rose grew up in the deserts of New Mexico and Saudi Arabia. In the one she could camp at the Red Sea, and in the other she enjoyed fine red chile. Her childhood was full of ballet and books about heroic girls, like Laura Ingalls, as well as one heroic boy she liked called Taran, the Pig Boy. She would put on magic shows wearing capes she made herself and write poetry on an old typewriter.
Her parents were extremely generous, inviting in strangers, missionaries, exchange students, and friends to dinner frequently. Caroline hopes that generosity has gotten into her, too.
When she was fifteen Caroline became an exchange student herself in Australia, where she camped in the Outback and, among other things, got bitten by an emu.
Caroline became a teacher and has taught English and social studies in Louisiana, Virginia, Florida, and New Mexico. Once she dressed up as an alien visitor from the planet Zircon, and her students were tasked with introducing her to New Mexico and its history and citizens.
Caroline lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband and two sons. No longer teaching, she writes full-time, about things like imaginative little kids, non-biting emus, bayous, and snickerdoodles, seeking to honor childhood and all its fun and goodness.
Sources:
Author website
Author interview : Cynsations
Also by Caroline Starr Rose:
Blue Birds. Putman Publishing. 2015.
read more!
The Ballad of Lucy Whipple by Karen Cushman
It is 1849, and California Morning Whipple—her preferred name being Lucy—and her mother and sisters move from Massachusetts to a mining town in California. There her mother sets up a boarding house and spends her days hard at work just to keep the place open, with only Lucy being old enough to help—but Lucy would rather read and write letters than run a business…
Worth by A. LaFaye
When an accident during haying leaves Nate’s leg crushed, Dad brings in an orphan boy, John Worth, to help on their Nebraska farm. In the months of his recovery, Nate feels less than worthless, while at the same time John mourns the recent loss of his family in a tenement fire. As the two boys slowly recover from their grievances, will they slowly become friends also? Or will Nate’s shame cause him to pull away from both John and his Dad?
Blue Birds by Caroline Starr Rose
Alis and her parents traveled to the New World from England. She feels free in the trees with the birds and the sky, away from the crowded and dirty streets of London. She’s even made a friend in the native Roanoke tribe. When the relationship between the English and the Roanokes turns deadly, Alis’ parents want to leave, and Alis must make an impossible choice.