Books with title Warm As Wool

Betsy Ward's three children are cold. It is 1803, and they have traveled by covered wagon to the dark woods of Ohio. After the family shivers through the icy first winter in a drafty log cabin, Betsy is determined to get wool to make warm clothing for the children. She seizes upon a chance to buy eight bedraggled sheep. But it's harder than she expected to raise sheep on the frontier. Will Betsy be able to keep her sheep alive? Scott Russell Sanders tells the dramatic story of a pioneer mother's struggle to provide for her family.

Scott Russell Sanders encourages us to understand history as he does, by imagining past lives. He was fascinated by a fragment of information that he found in a nineteenth-century record book, about the first pioneer to own sheep in Randolph Township, Portage County, Ohio. The pioneer was a woman, Betsy Ward. Her story has inspired this one, and Helen Cogancherry has illustrated it with deeply affectionate, richly textured scenes that show the promise of opportunity, the hardships that seem to keep coming, and the strength of a mother s love. Offering a vivid picture of life on the frontier, Warm as Wool is intimate and emotionally involving. Superb storytelling and artwork bring us the past afresh while inspiring our appreciation for the vital and largely unsung role women have played in our nation s growth.