Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell

She whines, cries, and argues until she is finally offered a bribe: a cell phone to be given when she gets home.

When Gen is told about these summer plans, she is horrified. Keeping that in mind, you can see why my interest would be piqued by a book entitled Little Blog on the Prairie, which is about Gen Welsh who is forced to go on a family vacation to Frontier Camp, where she, her mother, her father, and her little brother Gavin will live as though it is 1890. I loved that series – it’s the only reality show I’ve ever been able to stand. Exactly ten years ago, PBS was filming Frontier House, a show where three families went to Montana to live in the same conditions as people would have in 1883. This entry was posted on, in 2010, Children's Fiction, General, Young Adult Fiction. Publication date for this title from Bloomsbury is May 11, 2010. Read the book as a way to pass a few hours, but not for history or for character development.

Watch Frontier House if you want to see what radical historical reenactment will do for and to a normal American family. He wears a leather necklace, and Gen thinks he’s cute. That’s what life in the 1890’s will do to a healthy American teenager.Ĭaleb, Gen’s “love interest”, is so nondescript that I have trouble saying anything about him. Only Norah’s so isolated and the friendships she’s made have been so transient that she has become bitter and disagreeable. Norah isn’t a very likable girl, and she comes across as one of those stereotypical over-protected homeschoolers that I only find in books, not in real life. Norah, the daughter of the camp’s proprietors, is incredibly sheltered and naive and at the same time, she acts as if she knows all about human nature and modern technology.

Really? Would anyone set off on a three month vacation without knowing anything about where he’s going or what he’ll be doing? But he stays anyway and spends his days cutting down trees to scare away the bears. He’s completely blindsided by the idea that the family has agreed to live like the pioneers, and he doesn’t know what to do about the entire experience. Gen’s dad goes on a three month vacation, not only not having read the brochure about the camp, but also not having listened to anything Gen’s mom told the family about the camp. Several of the characters were unbelievable. Unfortunately, Gen’s broken the rules by bringing along her new cell phone, and her friend back home has set up a blog to record all of Gen’s impressions of the place and the people in the “frontier” community. Gen’s family goes to a “frontier camp” for vacation, and they are expected to live like people in the 1890’s (ala PBS’s Frontier House, which the author acknowledges as inspiration at the end of the book).

I read an ARC of this YA/middle grade title, and I thought it was just OK.

Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell