Book Review: Pintsized Pioneers by Preston Lewis & Harriet Kocher Lewis

Pintsized Pioneers: Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time by Preston Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Informative, eye-opening, and mind-boggling!

Pintsized Pioneers: Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time by renowned Western writers Preston Lewis and Harriet Kocher Lewis is an eye-opening compilation of numerous original and raw source materials woven into a cohesive whole, detailing what childhood looked like on the American frontier (c. 1850s to the early 1900s). From memoirs to diaries to newspaper accounts, the authors dug deep and wide in their research, and the results of their efforts are both informative and mind-boggling. Move over Little House on the Prairie!

Although targeting a young adult audience, the book is suitable for and will be of interest to even older readers, especially those born and reared through a sheltered childhood. The lives recorded and related here are far from what most will have experienced growing up in the latter half of the 20th century. And though I was clearly reminded of aspects of the earlier books in the famed Laura Ingalls Wilder series, the stories of childhoods presented here depict a harsher and, often, more desperate living, especially when one or both parents were missing from the family due to death or other absences. Childhood was necessarily truncated to aid in the family’s survival or, in some cases, willfully abbreviated by youngsters themselves pursuing dreams of being a cowboy. The reported ages of these children taking on adult responsibilities and tasks and doing so successfully was mind-blowing.

While the result of historical research, I want to emphasize that the factual details and anecdotal evidence are delivered with a storyteller’s skill. The authors’ writings are engaging, easy to read, and still compelling. Some of the stories reflect brutal living conditions for these children and their families, sometimes with tragic, heartbreaking results, and I teared up reading some of the accounts. However, I also laughed over amusing details, such as the plethora of euphemisms for buffalo dung. (The Lord got it right, making me a boys’ mom.) I also thank God I wasn’t born 100 years earlier.

I recommend PINTSIZED PIONEERS: TAMING THE FRONTIER, ONE CHORE AT A TIME to young adult readers of history and non-fiction and adults interested in American frontier life.

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