The Year We Were Famous by Carole Estby Dagg

MY THOUGHTS: The hardback edition came out in 2016 and last month the bright and inviting paperback version was released.Įleven year old Terpsichore (Trip) was named after the Greek Goddess of dance and song by her mother. Her sights set on the cash prize at the upcoming Palmer Colony Fair, but can Trip grow the largest pumpkin possible–using all the love, energy, and Farmer Boy expertise she can muster? (From Penguin Random House) But Trip feels like she’s following in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s footsteps, and she hatches a plan to raise enough money for a piano to convince her musical mother that Alaska is a wonderful and cultured home.

Trip and her family are settling in, except her mom, who balks at the lack of civilization. Determined to provide for his family, he moves them all to Alaska to become pioneers as part of President Roosevelt’s Palmer Colony project. It’s 1934, and times are tough for Trip’s family after the mill in their small Wisconsin town closes, leaving her father unemployed. There’s also a GIVEAWAY detailed below (U.S. THE YEAR WE WERE FAMOUS won the Will Rogers Medallion, the Willa award from Women Writing the West, was selected by the American Library Association for its 2012 Amelia Bloomer List of Best Feminist Fiction, and won the Sue Alexander Award from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.Welcome to this week’s edition of Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and my review of a sweet historical tale. Fortunately, newspapers across the country reported on their travels, and THE YEAR WE WERE FAMOUS is based on those articles, with imagination filling the gaps between known facts. They intended to write a book about their adventures, but because of the way their trip ended, their journals were burned. For a year, they were famous as they met governors and mayors, camped with Indians, and visited the new president-elect, William McKinley. In two hundred thirty-two days, they wore out thirty-two pairs of shoes, crossed mountains, deserts, and plains, and survived a highwayman attack, flash flood, blizzards, and days without food and water. THE YEAR WE WERE FAMOUS is based on the true story of Clara and her suffragist mother, Helga Estby, who walked 4,000 miles from their farm in Mica Creek Washington, to New York City in 1896 in a heroic attempt to win $10,000 that would save the family's farm and prove women could do it.Įquipped only with satchels containing compass and maps, first-aid supplies, journals, pistol, and a curling iron, they headed east along the railroad tracks.

The Year We Were Famous by Carole Estby Dagg