One Book Montana

Hattie Big Sky website
Reading group discussion questions
Resources for reading Hattie Big Sky
Kirby Larson bio, website, interviews, and blog
Loan copies of Hattie Big Sky
One Book Montana

Kirby Larson’s Hattie Big Sky Chosen as 2008 One Book Montana

April 11, 2008—Humanities Montana and its Montana Center for the Book announce the 2008 One Book Montana selection, Hattie Big Sky, Kirby Larson’s moving novel of dry land farming and “proving up” on the home front in World War I Montana. A Newberry Honor Book, Hattie Big Sky will provide Montana readers, young and old, with a compelling portrait of homestead life in troubled times and with a variety of important issues, historic and contemporary, to discuss.

The One Book Montana program offers an invitation to all Montanans to read and discuss Hattie Big Sky over the summer and fall. Humanities Montana will provide reading and discussion guides, suggestions for library, school and book group projects, and opportunities for reader comments and other tools on its website, www.humanities-mt.org/onebook.htm. Through the generosity of the publisher, Delacorte/Random House, a limited number of copies will be available from Humanities Montana for short-term loans to book groups. Check the web site for additional programming, including events with the author at the 2008 Montana Festival of the Book, October 23-25, in Missoula.

Sixteen year old Hattie, tired of being shuttled from one relative to the next, summons the courage to leave Iowa and move by herself to Vida, Montana, to prove up on her late uncle's homestead claim. Under the big sky, Hattie braves hard weather, hard times, a cantankerous cow, and her own hopeless hand at the cook stove on her quest to discover the true meaning of home. In the process she and her neighbors battle the elements and an influenza epidemic and an equally devastating epidemic of xenophobia and hysteria as the costs of World War I hit home.

Hattie Big Sky has received numerous honors including 2007 Newbery Honor Book, 2006 Montana Book Award, School Library Journal starred review, Booklist starred review, School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, Book Links Lasting Connections of 2006 title, Barnes & Noble Teen Discover Title, Borders Original Voice, 2006 Cybils finalist as well as nominations for eleven state Young Reader’s Choice Awards.

Kirby Larson was inspired to write Hattie Big Sky by her great-grandmother, Hattie Inez Brooks Wright, who homesteaded by herself in eastern Montana as a young woman. Larson’s other books for young readers include the award-winning picture book, The Magic Kerchief. A non-fiction picture book, Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship and Survival (co-authored with Mary Nethery and illustrated by Jean Cassels), is due out in August 2008. She is recently retired from the faculty of the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program and is a frequent presenter at writing conferences.

"I am honored that Humanities Montana selected Hattie Big Sky for this year's One Book Montana Award," Larson said. It is especially rewarding to me that a book for younger readers has received this illustrious recognition. Inspired by my great-grandmother who homesteaded by herself in Montana as a young woman, Hattie Big Sky is my love letter to all those in prior generations who came west in search of a better life. I am pleased that this story will be shared by families across Montana and I very much hope that, as they read it together, they will discover for themselves the strength that comes from finding, and making, a home.

"We are delighted with this year's One Book Montana selection," said Humanities Montana executive director Mark Sherouse. "Hattie Big Sky is a work of historical fiction that will engage both younger and older readers, and its selection this year presents a fine opportunity for inter-generational reading and discussion. We hope to see it read and discussed not only in libraries and book groups, but also in schools and among students, teachers, and parents."

This is the sixth year Humanities Montana has offered the state-wide One Book program. In previous years One Book Montana has featured The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe, This House of Sky by Ivan Doig, Letters From Yellowstone by Diane Smith, Fools Crow by James Welch, and the inaugural selection, Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker.

Humanities Montana is indebted to its Montana Center for the Book advisory committee for assistance in choosing this year’s One Book Montana selection. Advisory committee members include William Bickle III, John Clayton, Bill Cochran, Walter Fleming, Penny Hughes-Briant, William Marcus, Rick Newby, Kathy Springmeyer, Barbara Theroux, and Niki Whearty.

Please join us in reading Hattie Big Sky in the coming months, and take advantage of some of the programming and suggestions we will be offering. One of the core beliefs underlying the Montana Center for the Book is that literature—stories, words, poetry, history—can bring us closer together, can give us deeper understanding of each other. We believe the One Book Montana program can be a valuable part of that process.

Humanities Montana and its Montana Center for the Book promote Montana literature, libraries, and literacy, and sponsor the Montana Festival of the Book (October 23^rd-25^th in Missoula), the Letters About Literature writing competition for young people, and OpenBook reading and discussion programs. The Montana Center for the Book is a program of Humanities Montana, Montana’s independent non-profit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.