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The Children's Blizzard
The Children's Blizzard
Author: David Laskin
That 1888 January day on the northern plains was bright and warm–the first mild weather in several weeks–leading many children to attend school without coats, boots, hats, or mittens. A number of students were caught in the sudden storm that hit later that day. Laskin details this event–the worst blizzard anyone in those parts ...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780060520762
ISBN-10: 0060520760
Publication Date: 10/1/2005
Pages: 336
Rating:
  • Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
 126

3.8 stars, based on 126 ratings
Publisher: Perennial
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover, Audio CD
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 62 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 17
I have family that live in South Dakota in the area that hit hard by this blizzard. He mentions Spirit Lake and these boys watching the storm roll over it before it hit them. That is the area where my family homesteaded and still live today, about 12 miles from DeSmet and Laura Ingles.
Even though I grew up 100 yrs after that storm, I knew about it.

I don't think you can find a cemetery in that area of South Dakota that does not have at least one marker that reads Jan 12 1888.

My Mother refused to read this book as felt it would be to painful to hear the stories over again. As she grew up there and knows how hard a Dakota winter can be.

Laskin did a wonderful job of taking a horrable chapter in our history, and telling it with senitivity. He did not go into gory detail about the death of so many and did put in the good side of the story too.
earlsgirl avatar reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 188 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 11
Wonderful true story about the devastating blizzard in 1888 before storm warnings like this were made known to the people. Yet politics did play a part in the disaster. A fascinating look at the background and how it all happened. Graphic descriptions of death make it real for the reader. Lingers in the mind long after you have finished the book.
reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 8 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 9
I read this book a few years ago, and it still sticks with me. Knowing the blizzard was coming,I wanted to warn the kids and the teacher. I rooted for them to live, knowing the outcome would not be affected. I loved learning about the individual lives, and didn't know which ones would live and which ones would die. The way the stories are told make this book the gem it is. Laskin peels away the layers of their stories. The story that could have been a small lost part of South Dakota becomes the story of a generation lost to a rougue storm.
reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 3352 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 8
An engrossing narrative. You live the sorrows and victories right along with the protagonists. As well as telling about the blizzard, the author gives us biographies of the various people trapped by the weather.
DesertShaman avatar reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 203 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 5
Extremely well-researched and written. Brings to life characters with respect and carefully fictionalized last minute accounts of their lives. Meteorological information written in such a manner to interest readers and enhance the feeling of urgency. Carefully detailed accounts of political infighting that may have influenced the future of the Weather Service are also well-explored.
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Grnemae avatar reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 451 more book reviews
The author did lots and lots of research for this book and at times if felt as if he was trying to cram all that information into the book. I understand the need for the background information on immigration, weather phenomenon and the formation of the modern day weather forecasting, however, it was like reading a textbook at times. It was an interesting textbook but I wanted the human stories - the stories of who was caught outside in the storm and how they tried to escape or were trapped. Page count showed that it was more than half way through the book before the author got to this information and for me at least there was not enough.
reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 51 more book reviews
This is an amazing tale, graphic and sad, but speaks in a true voice of the hardships pioneers of the period suffered. I found some of the weather information sections a bit too lengthy and detailed for my taste, but certainly some scientific explanations were necessary to understand the inconceivably powerful forces at work the day of the blizzard. The author did extensive research in both factual and oral histories. Most of the book does read as a novel, and proves the point that a true story can be even more riveting than fiction! All in all, a great read for anyone interested in history and our westward expansion.
reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 11 more book reviews
Very moving book.
MKSbooklady avatar reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 989 more book reviews
Mostly painfully heartbreaking, sometimes painfully boring, this is nonetheless a story of what I think is a little known tragedy. Occurring in the late 1800's, in a part of our nation that was still be settled, Nebraska/Wisconsin/Dakotas, we find how harsh and unforgiving the weather was, and still is. Stories with dead children are never pleasant at all to hear or read, and this one is particularly heart-wrenching. There is little too much technical explanation, but all in all a poignant and haunting tale.
justreadingabook avatar reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 1726 more book reviews
What I thought it would be and what it actually was were two very different things.
Spoiler alert. If you want to know loads of background on weather systems this is the book for you.
The stories of the actual day and the tragedy that happened to mostly children and some adults is truly heart wrenching.
Details upon details for the weather and how it happened.
Interesting and a sad part of our plains history that should be told.
peepers avatar reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 56 more book reviews
As one person said, this book reads like a novel. I was hooked right away and never lost interest. There is a lot of talk of how the weather was predicted in 1888 which was never boring, surprised me. The horrors that these poor people went through during and after the blizzard are heart wrenching and sometimes queasy. After the last blizzard here in SE MN this past winter where I-35 southbound was closed and part of the north bound lane I cannot imagine how anyone survived the 1888 blizzard. We are never to take weather predictions today as a sure bet as it can and has changed in an instant. A great story of survival and weather history during the late 1880's. Are people as compassionate today.
reviewed The Children's Blizzard on + 44 more book reviews
In three minutes, the front subtracted eighteen degrees from the air's temperature. Then evening gathered in, and temperatures kept droppingin the norhtwest gale. By morning on Friday, January 13, 1888, more that 100 children lay dead on the Dakota-Nebraska prairie.
Thousands of impovrished Northern European immigrants were promised that the prairie offered "land, freedom and hope." The disastrous blizzard of 1888 revealed that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood or controlled, and America's heartland would never be the same.


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