Remember the curve of the sun in your bedroom window late in the day, the way your little brother's hair smelled after his bath, and the sound of your mother and father talking in the kitchen. Keep in mind that you are making memories.Ĭonsider that something you take for granted today may be the one thing you might pine for someday, and there might not be any more of it left, but you'll remember its sweetness. And someday in the future someone will stand there and wonder about you, wonder if there was ever anybody else.

US History and Children's Literature, various articles.“ And no matter where you are right now, you can come on out and stand in the middle of it as the sun is going down, and you can know that right in the spot where you are standing, there used to be someone else, that at some other point in time, someone stood where you are standing, thinking their own thoughts.

Related Areas Within Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Web Site

Prairie Visions by Pam Conrad, book review.

Prairie Songs by Pam Conrad, book review.

Another book dealing with the subject of the fierce competition for fossilized remains on the prairie is Kathryn Lasky's Bone Wars.

The idea of a quest fully realized in My Daniel can also lead to a discussion of the quest story genre.Ĭonrad does well in taking us back and forth from past to present and Julia's evocation of the prairie makes this book a good addition to any study of the prairie and such books as Prairie Song and Prairie Vision also by Conrad.

The climax is so easily identifiable in this book that it provides the opportunity to discuss such moments in other literature. The touching, dramatic story reaches its climax when they reach the dinosaur room.

The telling and the physical act of getting to the exhibit exhaust the woman until both the readers and her grandchildren are afraid for her well-being. Obsessed as her grandson seems to be with the subject of dinosaurs, Daniel did indeed meet with success on his dinosaur hunt but only moments later he was struck by lightening. Each exhibit in the museum prompts another memory about her brother. Needing frequent rests on the way, she tells the tragic story of her brother Daniel who discovered a brontosaurus on their land in Nebraska. Grades 5-7.Īn old woman, Julia Creath Summerwaite, takes her grandchildren to the museum to see some dinosaur bones.

My daniel by pam conrad