The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin is Youngest’s book group assignment for March. This is a historical fiction book based on a real blizzard in January of 1888.
This book had a very long waiting list at all the libraries. It must be very popular. We purchased it on Audible.
We talked about this book, before anyone listened to it, because there are blizzard stories and winter stories in the Little House on the Prairie series. We pondered life on the prairie in winter.
I looked it up, The Long Winter is based on the winter of 1880-81, which started with an early October blizzard. I think I also remember a story where a school teacher, maybe Laura, was faced with a sudden blizzard and the safety of the school children.
If your family loved The Little House series as children, probably this book would be loved by now adults. There are adult themes in The Children's Blizzard.
Youngest and my husband listened to The Children's Blizzard on Audible, overlapping. Multiple devices can listen to the same story on Audible.
They both liked it a lot. My husband in particular really loved it, he grew up in Iowa. He understands prairie weather and the vastness of the landscape. He has never read the Little House series. I read it out loud to the kids, each in turn, so I have read the whole series many times.
March 2025 is a tight book month for me. I read this book two weeks after youngest and my husband read it. I squeezed it in just before her group met.
I thought The Children's Blizzard was a terrific book. It was well written. The story was very engaging.
There is an author’s note at the end of this audio book. Melanie Benjamin shares, that only in this one book of hers, the characters were fictional and the event was real. (In the rest of her historical fiction, she is writing about real people.)
That is how historical fiction should be written in my opinion, real event, fictional people.
I boycott historical fiction where the author makes up a story about real people. That is how most historical fiction is written.
So it is very fortunate that this is the one book I am reading of hers.
Melanie Benjamin has published many books, listed at the bottom of this post. Anyone who likes traditional historical fiction, she writes very well.
Two nonfiction titles are mentioned in the author’s note at the end of Melanie Benjamin‘s The Children’s Blizzard.
Melanie Benjamin -
https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/melanie-benjamin/
In each book post, I utilize https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/
This is a wonderful website that helps clarify the publication order of books and verifies book series. I use this website because there are no spoilers. But if I need a description, I can click over using the links, easily. There are also author bios.
