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A review by triscuit807
The Jumping-Off Place by Marian Hurd McNeely
5.0
I confess that based on the description that this was the 1930 book I was most interested in reading, and I'm pleased that it didn't disappoint. Set in the 1900s four young orphans move from a small town in Wisconsin to the Dakota prairie to "prove" a land claim established by their uncle the previous year. The uncle had taken them (and mother) in on the death of their father, kept them when the mother died, and dies himself of complications of a stroke before the book's story begins. The "children" (18, 15, 10, and 8) decide to honor his memory by continuing his dream of the prairie; luckily he has left them a notebook with the info they'll need. He also did a lot of prep work the previous year or they would never have been able to do it. As it is they almost don't succeed. They face the hardships of trying to be adults, the hostility of one set of neighbors, heat and drought, having their crops fail, and then winter and a late blizzard. Without help from a townsman and the salary from a teaching job they wouldn't have made it and "proved up". For all their travails they never go hungry, able to rely on the tinned food that their uncle had purchased. There is no doubt that they are in all ways exceptional compared to the normal squatters. descriptions of their neighbors' claims leave no doubt to that. They have a middle class life back in Wisconsin and don't have to be in Dakota, the other families have nowhere else to go. So far I've only read one "Little House" book, but it seems to me that this book is less idealized, Does the book have issues?
Yes, it's written in 1929; issues are going to be there. In no way could 4 orphans go off on their own today. It wouldn't be allowed, the uncle may not even had custody of them. Yet they do and they hold down jobs much as youngsters their age did in the early 1900s-40s. The main issue is the concept of Manifest Destiny. The "jumping-off place" is the end of the railroad line in a small town in Tripp county. The claim is on recently opened land which had been part of the Rosebud Indian Reservation (Sioux), a part of US history that happened and can't be avoided. There are no Native Americans in the book and very few references to them: a comment that the Sioux were "the worst" and that there were lots of arrowheads to be found. As far as cultural insensitivity, I'm not condoning it, but I've seen worse in some of these early Newberys. I read this for my Newbery Challenge and for my 2018 Reading Challenge.
Yes, it's written in 1929; issues are going to be there. In no way could 4 orphans go off on their own today. It wouldn't be allowed, the uncle may not even had custody of them. Yet they do and they hold down jobs much as youngsters their age did in the early 1900s-40s. The main issue is the concept of Manifest Destiny. The "jumping-off place" is the end of the railroad line in a small town in Tripp county. The claim is on recently opened land which had been part of the Rosebud Indian Reservation (Sioux), a part of US history that happened and can't be avoided. There are no Native Americans in the book and very few references to them: a comment that the Sioux were "the worst" and that there were lots of arrowheads to be found. As far as cultural insensitivity, I'm not condoning it, but I've seen worse in some of these early Newberys. I read this for my Newbery Challenge and for my 2018 Reading Challenge.