Your Favorite Children's Books, Part 3

For all my love of books, I regret that I ignored a wonderful set available on the bookshelves of my home when I was a child.  My grandparents had the 1909 edition of Journeys Through Bookland, a collection in ten volumes of children's literature, poetry, and fables with black and white illustrated plates and pen and ink illustrations.  I believe I opened the books once or twice but was disappointed by the absence of color illustrations.  What a shame to have ignored these wonderful books.

Comments from readers of this blog continued to mention fairy tales.  Lynn Suiter wrote:  "Strangely, the Norwegian fairy tale, "Three Billy Goats Gruff" comes to mind as an early memory.  All I can remember is the goats need to cross a bridge to get to grass for eating.  Under the bridge is a mean troll who eats anyone passing.  I can't remember being scared of this plot but that it was so far fetched."  I, too, remember this tale.  It is one of the fairy tales collected by Asbjornsen and Moe.  The plot is similar to other fairy tales involving "eat-me-when-I'm-fatter," such as Hansel and Gretel.

Jill Bowden provided a special surprise by posting pictures of the covers of some of her childhood favorites--"Jack & Jill magazine, Nancy Drew, My Big Story Book, Read with Dick & Jane" and the cover pictured to the left, "The Red Fairy Book."  She added, "I also read Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott."  We certainly would not want to forget learning to read with the "Dick and Jane" books.

Linda Koebrich spotted the image of "365 Bedtime stories" and wrote, "Loved that book."  Nancy Moore, who shared her favorites last week, added her children and grandchildren's favorites, admitting that it was "hard to get all the way through because we kept laughing so hard!"  Those books are "Berenstiens B Book," in which almost every word starts with B, and "Because a Little Bug Went Ca-Choo," in which one action creates a long list of reactions!"  Genile Allton Rawson chose "The Trixie Belden mystery series [which she] started reading at age 10 and couldn't put them down."

One of the first replies to my call for followers to share their favorites came from Wes Fisk, who even provided biographical information about his favorite author, Dr. Thomas Clark Hinkle.  Hinkle was born in Illinois but came to Kansas with his parents in a covered wagon when he was two.  First ordained as a minister, he then became a doctor.  However, he found time to write more than 24 books for children about horses and dogs.  Wes said, "I loved his books."

Allan Hingston included books about dogs among his favorites, but he regretted the disappearance of some old favorites.  "Books I don't see anymore are ones like [The Adventures of] Ol Mistah Buzzard."  Its author, Thornton W. Burgess was a naturalist and conservationist who wrote more than 100 books, as well as countless short stories. His books were filled with characters like Little Joe Otter, Grandfather Frog, and Buster Bear.  Fortunately, new editions are still available on Amazon.

Along with book titles, people shared wonderful stories.  Linda Nathan wrote:  "When I was a young child my family lived two blocks from the library in San Bernardino, California.  The children/young adults' library was located below street level with a separate street entrance down steps from the sidewalk.  It was a much safer time and at age five my parents began to allow me to make the two block walk by myself.  ...It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with books and reading."  She admitted that some days she checked out the 3 book limit in the morning and returned those for 3 more in the afternoon.

After reading the stories in last week's blog, Linda added "They bring back many good memories--reading Zane Grey westerns aloud to my younger sister, hiding a book in the bathroom, and making my dad angry when the dishwater got cold while I was happily reading away.  Little Golden Books, Nancy Drew, Little House Books, Little Women.  Oh my!"

In my earlier blog about children's books I said I did not know what Isaac B. Werner read as a child.  I still do not know, but given his love of Shakespeare, I think it is reasonable to suggest that he may have begun reading Shakespeare when he was quite young.  While young people today may find Shakespeare heavy going, that was not necessarily true in the 1800s, and Isaac was certainly a great fan when he was in his twenties, already familiar with Shakespeare's plays.  I suspect he began reading Shakespeare very early.

Thank you to everyone who has shared their favorite childhood books and stories about their early love of reading.  Next week I will conclude this series on children's books with a special look at two specific types of books.

 

 

Isaac Claims a Homestead

"He could not breathe in a crowded place--

He wanted his air and his open space--

He watched while civilization neared on the path

through the wilderness..."

William B. Ruggles, "The Pioneer"

The pull westward for Isaac B. Werner had begun while he was still a teenager, and soon after his father died in 1865, Isaac left his father's rich Berks County, PA fields in the Lebanon Valley.  Leaving behind the picturesque Pennsylvania-Dutch community, Isaac and his older cousin Henry traveled first to Indiana, but the promise of the western frontier pulled Isaac onward to Illinois.  In Rossville, IL Isaac established a prosperous business as a druggist and later a milling partnership, but after a few years the gradual civilizing of Illinois reawakened a longing for "his air and his open space," and in 1878 he claimed his homestead and a timber claim on the Great Plains of Kansas.

Posters enticed settlers

Isaac was not some dandified small town druggist without calluses on his hands nor lacking farming experience in his background.  Experience in the milling business had added some agricultural knowledge to his youthful experience on his father's farm.  Yet, not even the Illinois prairie years had prepared Isaac for farming in Kansas.  Foremost was the limited rainfall, which caused crops that were lush and promising in the spring to wither and die in summer's heat and drought.  Next was the fierce wind, which propelled the blast-furnace heat into tender crops.  Fields of corn that had managed to receive the necessary rain and escape grasshoppers and chinch bugs often succumbed to the wind's gritty sand that shredded leaves and blew the essential pollen away before it could fertilize the waiting kernel, ruining the crop for both fodder and the development of the corn.  Add to that the sandy loam soil, and nature's trick of hiding patches of gumbo in unexpected places, and Isaac and other settlers faced unanticipated agricultural challenges.

Original 1933 Cover

 Isaac was not alone in his decision to leave the more settled parts of America and start fresh on the vast prairie lands which had previously been the domain of Native Americans and a few trappers and hunters.  Many American children have been introduced to the saga of Western expansionism through the "Little House" books of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  In Little House on the Prairie, Laura's family built their log house near what is now Independence, KS, having moved into Indian Territory in anticipation of the land being opened for settlement in the near future.  In Little House in the Woods the family returned to Wisconsin to settle on a pre-emption claim.  In Little Town on the Prairie, the Ingalls family moved to South Dakota where Laura's father finally claimed a homestead and they remained, participating in the growth of the town of DeSmet.

Replica homestead

Each of the Wilder's attempts to claim land relied on a different means.  Briefly, these are the three situations.  The Homestead Act of 1862 was signed by Abraham Lincoln, but it did not open all of the Western land for homesteading.  Some eager settlers moved onto land that was not yet opened and attempted to fulfill the requirements for homesteading--building a structure in which to live, making improvements to their property, and physically remaining on the property the required amount of time to mature their claim as if it were homestead.  If that land were subsequently opened for homesteading, they had a head start on other claimants, usually having claimed the most desirable, more fertile land by pre-emption, and they could remain.  Pre-emption could also apply to buying a claim and finishing the requirements started by someone else.  In the case of Indian Territory, those settlers were not always rewarded by their early settlement, as the case of the Oklahoma Land Rush and the term "Sooners" shows.  When the government made a new agreement with the Indians in Oklahoma, and that land was opened for homesteading, early settlers were not allowed to prove up the land they had settled and improved.  Instead, they had to return to the boundary and participate in the Land Rush with everyone else.  Those who hid and pretended to have "rushed" for the land they staked were called Sooners, (whether they were new settlers or preemption settlers trying to secure the land they had developed), given that name because they jumped the starters' guns the morning of the rush, taking advantage of getting to their claim sooner than those who began the rush at the designated starting places and time.

Stafford Co. Map 1885

Isaac came to southernmost Stafford County to stake his homestead in 1878 on land officially open for homesteading.  He built his residence, initially a dugout, and began making improvements by planting trees and breaking sod, and he remained on the land for the requisite 5 years necessary to prove up his claim.  In order to secure his patent, he took two neighbors before a local judge to swear with him that he had lived on the land for the required time and had made improvements.

According to the US Department of the Interior statistics, more than 270 million acres of public land, or about 10% of the land that made up the 48 contiguous states, was transferred to private ownership under the Homestead Acts.  Isaac claimed 160 acres, the maximum allowed under the Homestead law, and received his patent from the government, signed by President Grover Cleveland.

(Remember, you can enlarge the images by clicking on them.)