Rifles for Watie (edit title)

Holly J edited the awards of Rifles for Watie 3 weeks ago.

• Added an award: Newbery Medal
• Added year of an award: Newbery Medal 1958
• Added ranking of an award: Newbery Medal winner

Shelfari edited the first sentence of Rifles for Watie 3 weeks ago.

• "The"The mules strained forward strongly, hoofs stomping, harness jingling."jingling."

Timothy Gray approved Andrew Powell’s request to combine 13 books, including Rifles for Watie, 3 weeks ago.

Andrew Powell submitted a request to combine 13 books, including Rifles for Watie, 3 weeks ago.

Shelfari edited the description of Rifles for Watie Sunday, August 2 2009.

• Jeff Bussey walked briskly up the rutted wagon road toward Fort Leavenworth on his way to join the Union volunteers. It was 1861 in Linn County, Kansas, and Jeff was elated at the prospect of fighting for the North at last. In the Indian country south of Kansas there was dread in the air; and the name, Stand Watie, was on every tongue. A hero to the rebel, a devil to the Union man, Stand Watie led the Cherokee Indian Na-tion fearlessly and successfully on savage raids behind the Union lines. Jeff came to know the Watie men only too well. He was probably the only soldier in the West to see the Civil War from both sides and live to tell about it. Amid the roar of cannon and the swish of flying grape, Jeff learned what it meant to fight in battle. He learned how it felt never to have enough to eat, to forage for his food or starve. He saw the green fields of Kansas and Okla-homa laid waste by Watie's raiding parties, homes gutted, precious corn deliberately uprooted. He marched endlessly across parched, hot land, through mud and slash-ing rain, always hungry, always dirty and dog-tired. And, Jeff, plain-spoken and honest, made friends and enemies. The friends were strong men like Noah Babbitt, the itinerant printer who once walked from Topeka to Galveston to see the magnolias in bloom; boys like Jimmy Lear, too young to carry a gun but old enough to give up his life at Cane Hill; ugly, big-eared Heifer, who made the best sourdough biscuits in the Choctaw country; and beautiful Lucy Washbourne, rebel to the marrow and proud of it. The enemies were men of an-other breed - hard-bitten Captain Clardy for one, a cruel officer with hatred for Jeff in his eyes and a dark secret on his soul. This is a rich and sweeping novel-rich in its panorama of history; in its details so clear that the reader never doubts for a moment that he is there; in its dozens of different people, each one fully realized and wholly recognizable. It is a story of a lesser--known part of the Civil War, the Western campaign, a part different in its issues and its problems, and fought with a different savagery. Inexorably it moves to a dramat-ic climax, evoking a brilliant picture of a war and the men of both sides who fought in it. Winner, 1958 Newbery Medal Notable Children's Books of 1957 (ALA) 1964 Lewis Carroll Shelf Award

Shelfari edited the contributors of Rifles for Watie Wednesday, July 22 2009.

• Added a contributor: Harold Keith: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of Rifles for Watie Thursday, July 16 2009.

• "The mules strained forward strongly, hoofs stomping, harness jingling."