Larson, Kirby.
HATTIE BIG SKY
New York : Delacorte Press, 2006
IL YA
ISBN 0385903324

(2 booktalks)

Tired of being Hattie-here-and-there, Hattie longs for a place to call home.  She has had several homes since her parents died but none of them was really home.  And now Aunt Ivy wants to hire her out to a boarding house.  Can anything save her from this?  You bet.  She has inherited a homestead in Montana.  An uncle who she didn't know has left her his claim.  With little hesitation, Hattie heads to Montana to work the homestead.  When she finds out that she has less than a year to fence in the claim and plant 40 acres, she is determined to make a go of it.  With the help of some good neighbors, she might just do it.  But the United States is at war in Europe and the Spanish flu is making it's way across the country and the neighbors are getting suspicious of anyone who is different.  Hattie worries about her homestead, her friends, and her special friend who is away fighting in the war. 

Booktalk #2

16-year-old Hattie was orphaned when she was young and calls herself Hattie Here-and-There because she’s been shuttled around to different family members her whole life. Right now she’s living in Iowa with a distant cousin who she calls Uncle Holt. He’s kind to her, but his wife, Aunt Ivy doesn’t really want Hattie around and has arranged for her to go live and work as a chamber-maid. When Hattie receives a letter telling her she’s inherited 320 acres of land from an uncle she never knew, she decides to take her chances and heads to Montana alone to claim the land. Her first day there she goes out to get water and it’s so cold her hand freezes to the pump handle. Fortunately, a local boy who explains the practice of keeping a mitten hanging by the pump rescues her from freezing to death. That boy is only 9. But Hattie does have a love interest, a boy named Charlie, who’s away fighting in the First World War in Europe. Parts of the story are told through Hattie and Charlie’s letters.
This is a wonderful historical fiction book about a young girl who goes out in the world and proves herself.  (Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Awards nominee, 2008-2009)