Growing Up in Coal Country Paperback - 1999

Details

• Title Growing Up in Coal Country
• Author Susan Campbell Bartoletti
• Binding Paperback
• Pages 128
• Volumes 1
• Language ENG
• Publisher Clarion Books, Wilmington, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
• Date September 27, 1999
• Illustrated Yes
• Features Illustrated
• ISBN 9780395979143 / 0395979145
• Weight 0.75 lbs (0.34 kg)
• Dimensions 8.4 x 7.9 x 0.3 in (21.34 x 20.07 x 0.76 cm)
• Ages 10 to 12 years
• Grade levels 5 - 7
• Reading level 1110
• Themes
  • Chronological Period: 20th Century
  • Chronological Period: 1851-1899
  • Cultural Region: Mid-Atlantic
  • Geographic Orientation: Pennsylvania
• Library of Congress subjects Immigrants, Coal miners
• Library of Congress Catalog Number 9603142
• Dewey Decimal Code 331.382

Bartoletti has written a concise, thoroughly researched account of the often grim working and living conditions in Pennsylvania coal towns. An accessible writing style, as well as the abundance of stimulating information, makes for an engrossing historical account. Quotes from personal interviews with miners, as well as taped interviews and transcripts, provide a refreshing first person frame of reference. Horn Book

With compelling black-and-white photographs of children at work in the coal mines of northeastern Pennsylvania about 100 years ago, this handsome, spacious photo-essay will draw browsers as well as students doing research on labor and immigrant history. The story of these boys' lives are a part of Russell Freedman's general overview Kids at Work (1994) and of Betsy Harvey Kraft's biography Mother Jones (1995); but there's a wealth of personal detail and family story here that focuses on what it was like in the mines and in the homes and communities of these working children. Lewis Hines' famous pictures will grab readers, and Bartoletti has also gathered dozens of archival photos and heartbreaking oral histories. They show what it was like for eight-year-old breaker boys sorting coal surrounded by deafening noise and black clouds of dust, steam, and smoke; what it was like to be a mule driver underground; what it meant to be a spragger, a butty, a nipper. Drawing on personal interviews, archival tapes and transcripts, and a wide range of historical resources, Bartoletti finds heartfelt memories of long hours, hard labor, and extremely dangerous working conditions, as well as lighter accounts of spirited rebellion, mischief, and bonding. The immigrant experience is an integral part of this "coal culture": the strength of ethnic groups and the prejudice against them, and their banding together to form strong labor unions. As with most fine juvenile nonfiction, this will also have great appeal for adults.
Booklist, ALA, Starred Review