Picture Books — Review

Making it Home:
The Story of Catharine Parr Traill

by Lynn Westerhout
Napoleon Publishing, 2004
ISBN 0-929141-90-3
$18.95, 80 pp, b/w photos, ages 9 – 12
www.napoleonpublishing.com

Catharine Strickland, nicknamed “The Katie,” was born in 1802 and was raised with her seven brothers and sisters in a well-to-do family in England. Her life was regulated by the customs of her time and her place in English society, and it wasn’t until age thirty that she married Thomas Traill and emigrated to Canada. Her sister Susanna with her new husband, Thomas Moodie, and their brother Samuel also emigrated. During her life, Catharine wrote pioneering stories for children before children’s fiction was commonly written, guides for settlers in her new homeland, and studies of plants and animals. She died at age ninety-seven in 1899. Well illustrated with archival photos and drawings, Making it Home is a thoroughly researched biography of one of Canada’s most endearing natural historians. Children reading this story will be amazed at this remarkable woman’s life in a very different time in history

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