Prairie School

It’s the worst blizzard in fifty years! Delores is very ill, but there’s no way to get through the snow. How long will she be stranded at school? Out on the South Dakota prairie, the winters are fierce. This storm is the worst one It’s below freezing outside, and the winds are howling. All of the other kids have gone home, but Delores’s family can’t get to her, so she has to stay at the school. Between a fuel shortage and having to boil snow for drinking water, it’s been hard for both Delores and her teacher, Miss Martin. Now Delores is very ill. How will Miss Martin get her to the doctor in all this snow? Prairie School was inspired by letters from children at a real South Dakota prairie school, which Lenski then visited during the severe blizzards of the winter of 1950. “Miss Lenski’s real understanding of her prairie children makes this another distinguished . . . regional story.” -The Horn Book Magazine Born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1893, Lois Lenski achieved acclaim as both an author and illustrator of children’s literature. For her Regional America series, Lenski traveled to each of the places that became a subject of one of her books. She did meticulous research and spoke with children and adults in the various regions to create stories depicting the lives of the inhabitants of those areas. Her novel of Florida farm life, Strawberry Girl, won the Newbery Award in 1946. She also received a Newbery Honor in 1942 for Indian Captive, a fictionalized account of the life of Mary Jemison. Lenski died in 1974.