Prairie Dog Pioneers

A young girl resents her father for moving their family to Texas to live in a sod house, until her father explains their need for land of their own. Jo Harper (Outrageous, Bodacious Boliver Boggs!) and her daughter based the story on their ancestor Mae Dean, who ""went up the caprock"" (a phrase the book never explains) to the Texas panhandle when she was four. The girl seems too easily convinced that life on the prairie is worth the sacrifice. After spending most of the book pining for the home they left behind, she simply accepts her father's lecture in the final pages. Spearing, who is new to children's books, is more at home with landscapes than people. The neatly framed cut-linoleum print-block illustrations vary from the rather wooden depictions of the characters' faces to splendid expanses of the Texas prairies. His watercolored skies and vast grassy plains make it seem possible that a life could be carved out of this seemingly featureless land. Ages 5-up. (Sept.) FYI: A Spanish language edition, Como los perros de la pradera ($16.95, ISBN -11-6) will be released simultaneously.