New Dawn on Rocky Ridge: Book 6 in the Rose Years Series - A Story about a Thirteen-Year-Old, Family, and First Romance for Children (Ages 8-12) (Little House Sequel) - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Roger Lea MacBride, a close friend of Rose Wilder Lane's, was the author of the Rose Years novels.

Dan Andreasen has illustrated many well-loved books for children, including River Boy: The Story of Mark Twain and Pioneer Girl: The Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder, both by William Anderson, as well as many titles in the Little House series. He lives with his family in Medina, Ohio.

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It’s a big year for thirteen-year-old Rose and her family as they witness the turn of the century and, after years of hard work, experience their first apple harvest out on Rocky Ridge farm. And as her feelings for Paul grow stronger, there are even signs of romance in the air for Rose. It’s a time for new beginnings in New Dawn on Rocky Ridge, the sixth book in the Rocky Ridge series continuing the story that Laura Ingalls Wilder told of her own childhood, a story that has charmed generations of readers.

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Excerpt

Century's End

The mild, drizzly weather that had followed Christmas finally broke, and thelast day of the old century dawned clear and biting cold. The frosty air stungRose's nostrils, and the wind made her eyes water. But the bright sun warmed hercheeks and lay like a cozy shawl on the shoulders of her chore dress.

From the kitchen door she looked out onto the backyard. She didn't see thefrozen mud scarred by wagon tracks and hoof marks. She didn't see the railroadgrade blackened with coal soot. She didn't even see the wash on theline, waitingto be labored over with the heavy irons, and then neatly folded.

Instead she saw the sunlight glinting off the icy puddles. She heard thetelegraph wires singing in the wind. Gusts whipped the sheets she had hung outto bleach that morning. They shimmered as white and fresh as a hillside of appleblossoms and snapped cheerfully, like proud flags on Independence Day.

The strong light made ordinary things look sharp and solid, as if seen through astereoscope. On this day, at century's end, Rose's eyes looked at her everydayworld as if they were seeing it for the first time.

"For goodness sake, Rose," Mama's voice called out from behind her in the warmkitchen. "Please shut that door before we all catch our death of cold."

Rose pulled the door closed behind her, filled her lungs, and crossed thebackyard with the water bucket swinging from her hand. The cold air flowed likewater around her bare legs, but she felt a fire glowing within that no coldcould reach. This was New Year's Eve, the start of the twentieth century. Justthinking of it sent a thrill along all her nerves.

"Happy New Year!" she cried out to Mama's Leghorn chickens. The snowy hens weretoo busy pecking at the frozen earth to pay her any mind. Bunting, the Jerseymilk cow, lifted her head from her trough in the barn lot and lowed a singlehalf-questioning note. Then she stuck her wet nose back into the trough and bitanother mouthful of hay.

Rose pumped the squeaky handle until the water came. She watched a lonely castleof clouds hurry past overhead. The bowl of pure blue sky glowed with light.Suddenly the cloud let down a snow shower. Flakes as fine as dust blew about thebarn lot, dancing in the silvery light like confetti and powdering the roofslike cake sugar.

"January the first, nineteen hundred and aught," Rose said aloud. Never beforehad anyone lived in a year that began with nineteen hundred. Of course, everyyear was new. But this was something special, the changing of the centuries. Ina person's whole lifetime, that could happen only once.

Everyone in town had been talking about it for months. In Rose's Fifth Readerclass her new teacher, Professor Bland, taught the history of the century ?from the inventions of the steamboat and cotton gin to the telephone and motorcar; from the expedition of Lewis and Clark, through the Civil War, right up tothe war with Spain that had happened just two years ago.

"In one hundred short years, America has grown from a savage wilderness to thegreatest, richest nation on earth," Professor Bland told the scholars. "You muststudy the past to prepare yourselves to inherit the future."

The tattered newspapers and magazines that Papa brought home from the railroaddepot, left behind in the waiting room by traveling men, brimmed with storiesabout the condition of the country and the world. Rose especially liked to readarticles forecasting the future. Each issue had stories predicting everythingfrom flying machines to the most outlandish fashions.

There was so much to look forward to. New inventions were making life easier,taking the drudgery out of housework, and the country was in a boom. But somepeople weren't happy.

Rose read that in San Francisco people complained that Chinese immigrants weretaking away the jobs of hard-working fathers. The newspapers said the Chineseworked for little money and didn't want to become good Americans.

Rose had never met anyone from China. But she knew it was no sin to be poor. Andafter all, it was poor immigrants who had settled America and built it up-poorimmigrants from all over the world.

In the East, people complained about immigrants from Europe. In a single day inNew York City, where the Statue of Liberty watched over the harbor, shipsbrought ten thousand poor immigrants yearning for freedom. That was twenty timesthe number of people who lived in Mansfield, the little town in the Ozarks whereRose lived. In one day! So many foreigners were coming that in time there wouldhardly be any Americans left in America.

Rose knew, of course, that there really were no Americans, except the Indianswho were here first. Everyone else was an immigrant, or came from immigrantancestors. Rose's family had come from Europe, as long as one hundred andseventy years before. But now the country was bulging with immigrants, and howwould they all live?

The cities were crowding up, because Americans were going there, too, leavingthe old folks to keep up the farms. And everywhere the Negroes suffered almostthe same as when they had been slaves. There had been horrible riots in New YorkCity when some white people threw paving stones at Negroes.

In the South, in the dark of night, white men dragged Negro men out of theirbeds and hanged them without any justice. That was called lynching, and therehad been a hundred lynchings in a single year.

Rose and Mama and Papa often read the papers together at night at thedining-room table. Mama put out a bowl of apples, and they huddled around thecircle of light from the kerosene lamp, talking about the stories they read.

Excerpted from New Dawn on Rocky Ridge by Roger Lea MacBride. Copyright © 1997 by Roger Lea MacBride. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.