Counting on Grace by Elizabeth Winthrop

I just finished my first Mark Twain nominee for the '08-'09 school year. As a lover of American history, I couldn't have picked a better book. Elizabeth Winthrop tells the story of young children working in Cotton Mills in Vermont in the early 1900s. Back then, kids as young as nine years old worked 13 hour days in horrible conditions. Entire families were forced to work just so they could eat meals that contained nothing more than potatoes. I was amazed when reading the conditions in which these families lived. Imagine being snatched from your lessons at school and forced to work in a factory with no open windows and no air conditioning with floors so filled with grease it was hard to stand. I would recommend this book to those readers who are confident in their abilities. It is a quick read but contains some challenging vocabulary. If you begin reading this book, let me know so I can assist you and engage in dialogue through this blog. It is in our school library.