Customer Reviews

The Children's Blizzard

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

We forget sometimes just how vicious nature can be. In hurricanes this year, in 1991's Perfect Storm, the tri-State Tornado in 1925, and the Children's Blizzard of 1888 nature showed what it can do. Of these disasters, the Children's Blizzard is the least well known. Finally we have a book that chronicles this incident.

January 12, 1888 was a nice balmy day, the first after a fairly hard few weeks. Children went off to school without coats and gloves, farmers went out to work on projects they had been putting off.

Then the cold front came through. In three minutes the temperature dropped 18 degrees. A vicious wind blowing heavy snow caused a whiteout that dropped visibility to near zero. By midnight the windhill was down to 40 below zero. By morning (Friday the thirteenth) some 500 people were dead, many of them children trying to get home from school.

1888 was, by our standards, a primative time. There were certainly no satellite imagery put on television by the local weather forecaster. To be sure, there was some indication of a drop in temperature and snow at the weather forecasting office, but extremely limited communications prevented this warning from being widely circulated.

Well researched, well written, this is a book for reading in front of the fire in a strongly built house (the storm ripped the roof off of many schools, exposing the inside to the full fury of the storm) maybe with a hot buttered rum at hand.

David Laskin sets up the story of the January 12, 1888, blizzard well. He provides the back story of the Mennonite and Norwegian immigrants, the valiant teachers and students, and the Civil War veteran, whose daughter took refuge in a haystack during the storm. The reader learns to care about the participants before the blizzard starts and there is gut-wrenching suspense as the victims head out into the storm. Which of them will survive? Will any of them survive?

The main characters are the Schweizers, Swiss-German Mennonites who had emigrated to America from the Ukraine, the Rollags from Norway, and Walter Allen, a mischievous little boy who adds comic relief to an otherwise tragic story.

The day of the blizzard starts off unusually warm and the kids on their way to school and the farmers working in the fields aren't dressed properly. The temperature drops precipitously and the snow isn't ordinary slow; it's more like blinding sleet.

Laskin is also a weather geek; he provides more than we want to know about the cause of this "Storm of the Century." He provides info about lows and highs, jet streams and jet streaks (this little bugger is a main culprit), fronts, and St. Elmo's Fire. He also shows how the Signal Corps weathermen bungled the forecast. It's all very informative but we want to know what happened to the Schweizer children and Will Allen. An especially riveting scene is when Laskin explains hypothermia, using the Schweizer boys as an example.

In an epilogue, Laskin tells us what happened to the survivors and he makes a rather specious statement, suggesting that this storm put an end to the land boom on the Great Plains and that eventually immigrants learned that, although the soil was some of the best in the world, because of droughts and blizzards this land was uninhabitable. Apparently white people are leaving in droves and the land is returning to the buffalo and the Indians. When Wovoka told his people to dance and the buffalo would return, he wasn't too far wrong.

The Children's Blizzard is a harrowing tale, at least the sections that are directly about the terrible blizzard of 1888 that swept over the Dakota-Nebraska prairie. The author, David Laskin, picks some interesting tales of both survival and death and makes the entire terrifying night come alive. The full book, though, contains much more than these sequences and feels overly padded as the tales of immigrants arriving in America blend into discussions of how cold fronts move to the history of the weather service and further into quite gruesome accounts of what actually takes place as the body freezes (despite its graphic nature this particular section proves quite important to the story.) The book pales beside such classics as Isaac's Storm as the pieces do not always move towards creating a compelling narrative. Still when the blizzard finally hits the various tales of teachers, children, and farmers caught out in it are weaved together quite well.

This book was a traumatic read for me for several reasons. First off, my family is from Norway and some of them came over to the United States at this time period and at the turn of the century. They came for the same reasons that Laskin mentioned in his book: Norway is gorgeous, but it's lands were being used without the knowledge we have today of the need to replenish and rest the land. My ancestors came because of the promise of jobs, and of freedom, and of better lives for their children.

The fact that so many children were caught in this unexpected blizzard is the other reason this was hard for me to read. All of those mothers who have children and grandchildren, can place themselves in the place of the mothers whose children were lost in this very strange storm. I cannot imagine the agony of these mothers, and of the teachers who did what they thought was best for the children. It's easy in hindsight to say that the teachers should have done 'this', and that the weather forecasters were lax in their jobs...but so little was known not just of the vagaries of weather in that part of the United States, but how to get this information to those who needed it most. Even had the weather forecasters predicted this storm 24 hours before it happened, the chances that it would have reached the towns and individuals on the Dakota praries in time to prevent the deaths were slim at best.

I read this book in less than two days, and I found it as mesmerizing as "Issac's Storm", which I also read years ago. Perhaps it's because my own family were Norwegian and pioneers, though I don't think they were caught in this as they settled in Minnesota and Illinois and Utah.

There was one light note in this book that cracked me up. Laskin talked about the boys in one town who had a new and rather inept teacher. These boys would read far ahead of the teacher in their books, and then stump him with questions he did not know the answers too. Laskin also stated that many unaware teachers got literally picked up by the bigger boys and deposited outside the schoolhouse, which those boys then locked. Laskin said occasionally the schoolchildren had to be smoked out (by blocking the chimney). Since my great-great aunts (3) were teachers and one was a principal in Illinois this made me curious as to whether they experienced any of these stunts. Will have to check the geneaology.

This was a good book, a very poignant one. I wish Laskin had been able to include more writings of the pioneers who lived through this, though I am sure more of them would have broken my heart. We are so lucky to live in a day and age where our children are mostly safe from weather and disease through vaccines. It's only human predators we have to watch for now.

Karen L. Sadler

I bought this book at the airport when I needed reading material, and it was a wonderful surprise! I can't believe that I'd never heard of it before! I'm an avid nonfiction reader, and I love survival/adventure stories like 'The Worst Journey in the World,' 'Into Thin Air,' 'The Wreck of the Medusa,' and 'The Whaleship Essex.' 'The Children's Blizzard' has all the elements to make it a genre classic!

The first third of the book is spent putting the storm into historical, cultural, and scientific context, and readers who want fast action may become impatient. The effect of all this discussion is cumulative, however. The book--and the suspense--really sneaks up on you; I read each chapter with a steadily growing sense of dismay and fear. By the time the snow started falling, I was enthralled.

The historical information also serves to humanize--and better dramatize--the event. Mr. Laskin treats the immigrant pioneers, and their hardships, with dignity and respect. I never felt that the author was exploiting the tragedy for artistic or professional purposes. The subjects are difficult for modern readers to relate to--profoundly religious, parochial, Scandinavian, agrarian, (mostly) poor. Many writers would be tempted to either romanticize or condescend them. Laskin tries to let them speak for themselves.

Stylistically, I found the book to be very well-written. The language is clear, precise, and elegant.

Lastly, some reviewers found the scientific explanation of the storm and the history of weather forecasting to be tedious, but I enjoyed all of it! It's always nice when an author gives his/her audience credit for having a brain. I love books that I can learn things from, and this book was full of informative treats! Mr. Laskin makes the science very accessible to the layperson.

'The Children's Blizzard' is a gem!

I ordered this book as soon as it came out; I have a David Laskin book written a few years ago, and it's really good. But THIS BOOK- well, I would have to say that it's in my Top 10 of Favorite Books, and that's saying a lot, because I breathe books as though they were air....if I couldn't read, I would die.
FANTASTIC book. The imagery; the reality of those lives on the Plains, depending as they did upon things that to us today would seem quite trivial, with all of our modern conveniences. And then, from the frigid HELLS of the Siberian and Canadian Arctic, comes sweeping down a 200 year blizzard upon them, no warning, no real protection, and so quickly building into a maelstrom of blinding, stinging and freezing on contact with skin and all else, that many, if not most of the schoolchildren whose schools were released around the same time, just didn't stand a chance, even the ones who lived so close to the schoolhouse that in good weather, they could see it from home.
This book cries out to be read......a piece of American history that brings home to us what winters could be like to live through, on the Great American Plains, and told in a way that you can visualize the true tale of the families, handing down the story from generation through generation, we hope in front of a cozy fire in the hearth.
Touché, David Laskin!

It was a very dry read. Lots of information about how some families came to the area, and lots of information about weather data, but not really much about how the communtiy was affected etc. Not enough material for a whole book? I was expecting something more like the "Worst Hard TimeThe Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl" which I much preferred.

This is an exceptionally absorbing book because it fascinates not only with history -- the settlement of the northern prairie states and, of course most exhaustively, that fateful epic snowstorm -- but also with science -- the forces that shape our weather, and other aspects of physics and biology. (For example, the four means of heat transfer -- radiation, conduction, evaporation and convection -- as each applies in the circumstance of a person freezing in a blizzard. And the physical and mental responses, in various stages, of a person freezing to death. All very fascinating!)

Most compelling though is the detail with which the author brings to life real characters from the past. And somehow the matter-of-fact presentation of this detail, rather in keeping with the unexagerrated manner of these people, ultimately adds to the emotional impact of their stories. You get to know these individuals during earlier narratives of their migration and settlement. You are with them during the ordeal of the horrendous storm. By the time you read the final chapter, Aftermath, which traces a bit of their later lives, you will have exploded in tears many times, and will be left with much to wonder over.

It's pretty easy to understand why Erik Larson gave The Children's Blizzard a glowing recommendation: it reads like one of his books. Laskin follows the familiar Larson formula of seamlessly weaving detailed facts with a few dramatizations to create a book where personal tales accentuate the story's overall epic tone.

Still, as is almost always the case when something is copied, Laskin's efforts fall a bit short of the Larsen "standard." In this case, what differs is Laskin's ability to maintain the story's flow. Probably because of his scientific background, Laskin enthusiastically depicts minutia about such subjects like the sociological background of the settlers, the meteorological conditions that created this powerful blizzard, and the physiological reactions to hypothermia. Unfortunately, Laskin lingers a bit too long with these subjects, thereby breaking the flow of his story. Consequently, a reader may feel the urge to skip past these details in order to resume the main narrative.

While the story's flow isn't perfect, The Children's Blizzard is still a very entertaining, very informative book. Laskin does a great job of portraying the storm's impacts on individual lives and the incredible conditions that the settlers endured to eke out a living. In the end, the reader will have a great appreciation for nature's power and the fortitude of the pioneers who challenged it.

The book describes "The School Children's Blizzard" of 1888 in remarkable detail. The meterological details are described nicely (although more maps might have been an aide to the description). The political feud and the emphasis on the "verification" of forecasts is also explored. It's very clear that the weather forecasters of the time failed to use the technology available (observations submitted via train and telegraph)to warn the public of the impending blizzard.

The decisions of the families, children, and school teachers are described for a small subset of people impacted by the storm. Their stories are truly heartbreaking. The suffering of the children is described in some cases through the recollections of their descendents. It is here that the book finds its most powerful voice. The deaths of five children from exposure is imagined by the author, and although there is no direct evidence of how the children died, his description of hypothermia and the mental and physical effects of exposure jive well with the medical literature and more main stream literature such as "Into Thin Air."

Having driven through this area of the US during the last year I found the description of homesteading and the hardships endured to be amazing. How the Dakota Territory was settled is nothing short of a miracle. Locusts, droughts, blizzards, and the lack of community brought on by settling land in 160 acre plots makes one wonder how 40% of all homesteaders managed to "prove up."

Very interesting read. Makes one feel blessed that we have the ability to predict the weather much more precisely than they did in the 1880's. Great gift for those interested in weather and US history.