One Big Open SkyReview posted February 26, 2025.
Holiday House, 2024. 300 pages.
Review written February 13, 2025, from a library book.
Starred Review
2025 Newbery Honor Book
2025 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book
This Newbery Honor Book is a pioneer story - about a Black family. And yes, that surprised me - but it turns out it shouldn't, because from 1879 to 1880, over 20,000 Black people left the South to head West. The author gives details in the back of the book, but it turns out that many people lived out this story - even though there's not as much written about the Black pioneers.
One Big Open Sky is told in verse (so it doesn't take long to read), mostly from the perspective of Lettie, a girl who's leaving Natchez, Louisiana, with her parents and two little brothers, in a covered wagon pulled by their two mules Charly and Titus. We also get the viewpoint of her mother and a single black woman who joins their party, who's got a position as a teacher in North Platte, Nebraska.
The family joins a group of ten Black families headed for Nebraska. Their original plan was to take a steamboat up the Mississippi River most of the way, but when none of those will stop for a group of Black folks, they decide to walk. I didn't realize that the wagon was mainly for supplies, and there wasn't really room enough for everyone to ride, so unless you were sick, you walked alongside.
There are several dangers and setbacks along the way. Lettie's keeping the accounts for her parents, so she knows they can't buy all the good things they see at their stop in Independence, Missouri. She adopts the dog of a man who dies along the way, so she has him to turn to when a loss hits even closer to home.
Now at last Black girls can see someone like them in a pioneer story, with all the danger but excitement of leaving home behind and making the long journey to a new place.