A dramatic story featuring a young Nebraska girl who discovers the courage to save others during a life-threatening snowstorm IT IS 1888. Twelve-year-old Anna loves life on the Nebraska prairie where she lives with her parents and four-year-old brother in a simple sod house. She doesn't mind helping out with chores on her family's farm, especially when she is herding sheep with her beloved pony, Top Hat. Here, on the open prairie, Anna feels at home in the world. But at school she feels hopelessly out of place. Arithmetic is too hard, her penmanship is abysmal, and stuck-up Eloise Baxter always laughs at her mistakes. When a fierce blizzard suddenly kicks up on a mild winter day, Anna, her schoolmates, and young teacher, Miss Simmons, become trapped in the one-room schoolhouse. The kerosene is gone and the wood for the stove is low. Then the wind tears away the roof and door. Anna knows they must escape before it is too late. Does she have the courage and strength to lead the others through the whiteout to safety? Author Alison Hart offers young readers a dramatic story of rescue and survival set in a nineteenth century homesteading community and featuring a plucky, determined protagonist. An author's note provides more information about prairie life in the late nineteenth century and about the great storm that hit Nebraska in 1888, now known as "The School Children's Blizzard."
