May B / Caroline Starr Rose / 125 pages

This children's book is written in verse similar to that Inside out and back again  about the Vietnamese immigrant girl in the U.S.  This book is a story of the late 1800's set in Kansas a la Laura Ingalls Wilder.  While it is short, much happens.  The  girl, May B, is sent to live with a couple in a soddie to keep company with the wife who is quite homesick.  The worst happens and May is left alone, snowed in from a blizzard.  It is a story of survival and an internal tale of how she comes to believe in her own worth despite her flaw of dyslexia.  Missing from the book is the depression, anxiety, madness that took many victims on the prairie who weren't even snowed in.  I guess it is because it's a children's book.  (Although if she had been thinking Mark Twain award, the girl could have gotten really sick, developed a racking cough, had hallucinations, gangrene from frostbite, attacked by the wolves, and gone completely starkers.)  However, in the ambiance of Laura herself, May is able to keep it together and do what is necessary to return to her family.  (I hope her father has a life-long guilt-trip.)