Customer Reviews

Sod Houses on the Great Plains

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book will hold the interest of adults and children alike. Teachers and homeschool parents especially need to include it in a unit on the West. Mr. Rounds gives us a clear idea of what life in a sod house was really like: cramped quarters, leaky roofs, and uninvited wildlife falling through the roof. The illustrations in subdued pastels are almost childlike in their simplicity and very effectively visualize the text. I highly recommend it.

This is a children's book and should be rated as such. My son LOVED it! Informative and engaging!

A huge disappointment. First-grade level. This should be rated as a child's illustration. If you want detail don't buy this. Informtion is skimpy and incomplete.

Born in a sod house in North Dakota, Glen Rounds well knows of what he writes.

His discerningly spare illustrations and trenchant text perfectly relate how sod houses were built and lived in.

A good lesson for youngsters in how others have lived.

Glen Rounds summarizes, simply and clearly, how the sod house on the Great Plains came to be. With succint and vivid detail, he describes the introduction of sod as a building material, and gives the reader a feel for how it might have felt to live in such a building. This book is illustrated in his whimsical, somewhat abstract style which is sometimes reminiscent of cave drawings. This makes an excellent (and unromantic) complement to Dandelions and could be a precursor to On the Banks of Plum Creek (Little House). It is unfortunately out of print, but is available in public libraries and on the used book market.