Divide, The [Hardcover]

Michael Bedard (Author)

Book Description

When Willa Cather was a girl, her family moved west to the open prairie of Nebraska, leaving behind a world Willa loved dearly. Gone were the wooded hills and the meadows marbled with sheep. In their place was a flat, empty land, as bare as a strip of sheet iron. Willa felt she had come to the end of things; she felt the land did not want them.

But then spring came, and the silent land stirred to life. Summer followed, long and hot, and Willa roamed free over the open fields on her pony. Slowly she began to explore the hidden delights of this strange new countryside, and to make friends with her fellow settlers on the Divide. By the time autumn came, with its splendid sunlit colors, Willa understood that what she had thought was an ending was really a new beginning.

Michael Bedard and Emily Arnold McCully evoke the spirit of the American West in this lyrical story with delicate, richly hued illustrations. They celebrate, as Willa Cather did in her novels, the wild beauty of the vast prairie she came to love and the sturdy spirit of the pioneers who made it their home.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 2-7. Bedard dips into the life of Willa Cather, extracting an incident from her childhood that intrigues on several levels. At once, this is the story of a girl uprooted from her well-loved (Virginia) home and transported to a far-different (Nebraska) landscape, a tale of hardships faced by early settlers, and an evocation of the beauty of the prairie. Although Willa initially resents leaving her home and her dog (a heart-tugging scene depicts Old Vic straining at her chain as the Cather family's wagon retreats down the road), she eventually becomes enamored with the "strong and still and free" land. Unfortunately, even in the appended afterword, Bedard never identifies the Divide (a broad strip of prairie between the Little Blue and Republican Rivers in south central Nebraska), doesn't explain the reference to Old Vic's wearing leather shoes (Mr. Cather made them to soothe Willa's concern about the dog walking on rocky terrain), or tell how it happened that a ready-made house was available upon the family's arrival (relatives already lived there). What does come through is the sustenance the land gave Cather and, later, the inspiration it provided for her writing. With broad strokes and a sweep of colors that match the passing seasons, McCully deftly secures on paper the expansiveness of the prairie. Her one close-up of the young Willa captures the rounded face and determined-looking eyes found in Edward Steichen's later photographs of the famous novelist. For older students, a good link to Ann T. Keene's Willa Cather (Messner, 1994) and to Cather's O Pioneers! and My Antonia; for younger children, a look at a staunch protagonist with a great spirit for living.?Barbara Elleman, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

A picture book about what Willa Cather may have experienced as a child when her family moved west. Winter on the plains, on the Divide in Nebraska, was a mean season: ``There were no farms, no hills, no trees, only the flat, silent land beneath the vast, unbroken sky. She felt they had come to the end of things.'' But then came spring, ``like a shy child bringing gifts of flowers to the door,'' and Willa melts. As Bedard (Painted Devil, 1994, etc.) tells it, Cather delighted in the china sky, the fresh-plowed earth, and the few scattered neighbors: Swedes and Danes, Bohemians and Norwegians. ``Their speech was slow, their words were spare.'' The child comes to love the place: Spring slips into a hot, sunflowered summer, which gives way to a copper-colored autumn, the land ``strong and still and free,'' and brought to life in McCully's watercolors, which can be pensive, expansive, or joy-filled, as required. The metaphors are overtaxed (Willa marvels over the shells she brought with her from the East, ``so plain without, so pearled within''--just like her neighbors, just like the Divide), but a sense emerges of what it is like to be young and scared in a new landscape. The afterword makes reference to Cather's writings, but does not list specific sources for Bedard's text. (Picture book. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 29 pages
• Publisher: Tundra Books (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1422392171
• ISBN-13: 978-1422392171
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,817,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars The Divide, November 4, 2003

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shinyi (los angeles, ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Divide (Hardcover)

This is a colorful picture book with great discriptions of the season Willa Cather lived in the plains of the Divide in Nebraska.