Rose Clark was born in Ohio about 1880 and moved to Nebraska as a
very young child. The stories in the book are about her childhood, as
the title implies. She would go on to earn a PhD and become a professor
of geology and geography at Peru State College and Nebraska Wesleyan
University in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. I found out about her while
doing volunteer work at Wesleyan and was curious about her life because
being a female geology/geography professor in the 1920’s was rather
unusual. In the book, she says because her mother died when she was only
a toddler, when her older sister started school, her father could not
leave her home alone while he was at work, so he asked the teacher
nicely if she could go to class with her sister – and the teacher
agreed. So she started kindergarten at age 3-4, which perhaps instilled a
love for education that carried her through her life. Despite being a
Nebraskan myself, I don’t have a particular passion for Nebraska history
books but I did like this one. It is only 68 pages long and while I may
wish it was a bit longer, the introduction justifies it length. She
wrote this memoir (published in 1963) in her 80’s while on bed rest for
years due to ill health. Her lack of movement restricted her so that she
could not even write with her dominate hand. Determined, she learned to
use her left hand to write, while still limited to lying on her back in
bed. I admire her strength of will and hardiness despite her ill
health. I would recommend this book, and while don’t believe it’s on the
list for
Nebraska’s 150 Books Challenge, it seems like a good book to read in 2017 to celebrate Nebraska’s 150th statehood anniversary.
[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try
Prairie University: A History of the University of Nebraska, by Robert E. Knoll, (378.782 Kno)]
Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations
page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all,
or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the
course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see
more of this reviewers recommendations!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment