Hattie Big Sky (Hattie, #1) in Around the World in 80 Books

Aug 28, 2020 Linda Martin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: poverty, favorites, ya, newbery-honor-books, fiction, war, geo-montana, families, historical-fiction, productivity

Come along and meet Hattie, a brave and inspiring 16-year-old girl who inherits a homesteading claim in Montana. She's given about ten months to finish proving a right to the claim. She has to plant 40 acres (she chooses flax and wheat) and needs to fence in the 300+ acres. She's apparently too young to realize how impossibly difficult this will all be, so she digs in (literally) and sets in those fence posts and plows up a field.

You would think that's enough work but she's also milking a cow a ...more

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Apr 28, 2020 Astrid Lim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: america, young-adult, newbery, historical-fiction, second-hand, popsugar-2020

I enjoyed this book a lot! I can't help to warm to Hattie, an orphaned girl (who is not full of self pity), who tried hard to claim a land her uncle gave her in Montana. The setting was 1918, when World War I was still going on, the Spanish flu added to the darkness, and the days of working hard was for everyone, including a strong headed girl.

Even though the story is not familiar for me (farming in early 20th century), but all the small little things were written very nicely and interestingly a ...more

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Aug 30, 2011 mstan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: src-fall-2011, for-young-adults-or-children, historical-fiction, american

I was looking forward to reading about the life of a true pioneer woman, a homesteader setting out to prove her claim on her uncle's land in Montana. (I do have a weakness for Laura Ingalls Wilder, Willa Cather, and more recently, Nancy E. Turner.) Hattie is resourceful, relentlessly optimistic, and of course, brave, and I enjoyed reading about her struggles under the big open sky of the harsh but beautiful plains of Montana.

I was slightly disappointed, though, by the chicken-soup kindness of he ...more

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Jul 24, 2009 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it really liked it

Shelves: children-s-books, newbery

Hattie, orphaned and farmed out to various relatives, is just about to be forced to leave school and take up tedious work at a local store when she learns she has inherited a 320 acre farm. The farm is not without conditions, however. Hattie is required by the terms of the homesteading agreement to fence the land and plant a crop. She soon learns it will take real gumption just to survive the bleak Montana winter. A community of other homesteaders helps Hattie as she tries to make it in a small ...more

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Mar 16, 2008 Beth rated it really liked it

checking this book out for a potential lit circles book. So far, I'm loving it! My group of students is all girls who are also working on exploring the lives of various women throughout history. The reading level of this book might be a little high so I'll be looking for books of a little lower level along the same topic/subject to help build their background knowledge and vocabulary to use along with this book. ...more

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