May B by Caroline Starr Rose

May B., by Caroline Starr Rose, Schwartz & Wade, 2012, 225 pages.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, Ages 10-12

Recommended for: Ages 10-12 and up

Bottom Line: May B is the moving story of a young girl on the Kansas frontier whose will and courage are tested when she’s left alone in a sod hut.

“I won’t go.”

“It’s for the best, Ma says,

yanking to braid my hair,

trying to make something of what’s left.

Ma and Pa want me to leave

and live with strangers.

“I won’t go.”

Twelve-year-old girls on the Kansas prairie don’t have much say in where they go, so the very next day after learning that her parents have hired her out to a distant neighbor for six months, Mavis Elizabeth Betterly is jolting along in a springboard wagon with her dad.  It’s fifteen miles to the Oblingers’ sod hut.  Fifteen miles doesn’t seem that far, but it takes most of the day–and once Pa waves good-bye and his wagon disappears over the horizon, it may as well be Madagascar.  Mr. Oblinger is okay, but the missus is not pioneer stock—only a few years older than May, totally overwhelmed by the vastness of the prairie and lack of company.  “The quiet out here’s the worst part,/thunderous as a storm, the way/ it hounds you/inside/outside/nighttime/day.”  After a few weeks Mrs. Oblinger gets a strange gleam in her eye and tells May she’s going out for a ride.  She doesn’t return.  Mr. Oblinger sets out after her, and that’s the last we see of either of them.

Meaning, May is alone in the soddy with winter coming on.  She handles it as many children would, I think, with large gaps between knowledge and execution.  When she should be thinking about storing food, she’s remembering practical jokes with her brother Hiram, and her failures with reading, and her frustrated ambition to become a teacher.  As chilly autumn winds howl through the night she curls up under a buffalo hide and simmers with resentment.  Why must I be stuck/ twice/ where I don’t want to be,/ with no way to tell Pa, Ma, Hiram,/ with/ no one to come for me?  She tries to escape but sheer space overwhelms her.  Days creep by, increasingly stark and slim: Time/was made/for others,/ not for someone/ alone.  Sometimes she’s active and purposeful, other times she retreats into her memories.  The days become a test of character, a cocoon from which she will emerge stronger or not at all.

As I’ve indicated, the entire novel is written in blank verse, the very sight of which will strike fear and loathing in some readers’ hearts.  It’s almost all introspection, which will turn off a lot of other readers, especially boys.  But there’s value here, for a sojourn into someone else’s experience and an examination of that perennial question fiction poses: What would I do?  May B. performs no impressive feats of survival, but she survives, learns and grows.  Which is just what kids are supposed to do.

Cautions: Dark, depressing elements (main character faces the very real possibility of death)

Overall rating: 4 (out of5)

• Worldview/moral value: 4 out of 5
• Literary value: 4 out of 5

Categories: Historical Fiction, Verse Novels, Middle Grades, American History, Life Issues, Character Values