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Homemade Frontier Fun and Danger written by Preston Lewis and Harriet Kocher Lewis
Young Adult Nonfiction
Date Published: 11-04-2025
Publisher: Bariso Press
Pintsized Pioneers at Play: Homemade Frontier Fun and Danger explores the forgotten world of how kids lived, laughed—and sometimes limped—through their childhood years in the Old West.
While their parents settled the land, these pintsized pioneers explored it, creating their own adventures with homemade toys, daring games, wild animal encounters, and risky escapades. This engaging sequel to the award-winning Pintsized Pioneers: Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time shines a spotlight on the joys and perils of play in a land still being tamed.
From exploring the prairie and wrangling critters to celebrating frontier holidays and watching traveling circuses, this book reveals how children carved out fun and entertainment in a rough-and-tumble world. Learn how railroads and mail-order catalogs brought new toys, how schools and churches doubled as social hubs, and how a simple game could end in laughter—or injury.
Written for young adults but fascinating for readers of all ages, Pintsized Pioneers at Play is packed with history, heart, and a hint of danger. Written at a tenth-grade reading level perfect for curious minds, Pintsized Pioneers at Play includes a glossary of related terms.
Perfect for fans of Western history, educators, homeschoolers, and lovers of untold American stories!
Excerpt
Not even Christmas Day could rouse John Taylor Waldorf from his bed at two o’clock in the morning, but the annual arrival of the circus train in Virginia City, Nevada, was a different matter altogether. Waldorf and his friends arose early and willingly on circus day when on any other morning it “would require at least three calls and the threat of a ‘dose of strap oil’ to make me crawl out from under the covers.”
And why not? The circus provided an entertaining escape from daily hardships, much like the frontier theater, but much more exciting, as it combined the elements of an art exhibit, a traveling zoo, a professional band, a parade, a sideshow with oddities, a gymnastic meet with acrobats and aerialists, an equestrian show, a fashion show with performers and animals in exotic costumes, an occasional history lesson, and a three-ring environment awhirl with amazing activities and prankish clowns.
“Several thousand people are in the city from neighboring towns and from the country,” proclaimed the Evening Kansan of Newton in May 1897. “Circus day is equal to any legal holiday of the year, and today might have been a legal holiday so far as appearances were concerned. Nothing is quite of so much interest to everybody as a circus.”
The spectacle offered children a brief glimpse of the world beyond the boundaries of their farms or small communities. A circus was a childhood delight, allowing frontier youngsters to see exotic animals like elephants, lions, tigers, camels, zebras, monkeys, and even an occasional rhinoceros, giraffe, or hippopotamus.
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Preston Lewis is the award-winning author of more than sixty western, historical, juvenile, and nonfiction works. In 2021 he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for his literary achievements. The Will Rogers Medallion Awards named him the 2025 recipient of the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the literature of the American West.
Western Writers of America (WWA) has honored Lewis with three Spur Awards, one for best article, a second for best western novel and a third one for YA nonfiction in 2025. He has received eleven Will Rogers Medallion Awards (seven gold, two silver and two bronze) for written western humor, short stories, YA nonfiction, short nonfiction, and traditional Western novel.
Harriet Kocher Lewis is a retired physical therapist and PT educator. As an assistant clinical professor of physical therapy at Angelo State University, she taught documentation and scientific writing among other topics as the department’s coordinator of clinical education.
After retirement she became the publisher of Bariso Press and in that capacity an award-winning author and editor. Books she has edited have earned a Spur Award, Will Rogers Gold and Bronze Medallions for YA nonfiction and western humor, a Literary Global Book Award for cookbooks, and an Independent Author Award for western nonfiction. Other books she has edited have been finalists for Spur Awards in juvenile nonfiction and for Independent Author Awards for both memoirs and humor.
Kocher Lewis is co-author with her husband of the Spur Award-winning Pintsized Pioneers: Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time and three books on artificial Intelligence, all published by Bariso Press. They live in San Angelo, Texas.
Contact Links
Website: prestonlewisauthor.com
Publisher: barisopress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/prestonlewisauthor
Twitter: @prestonlewisaut
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/561670.Preston_Lewis
Instagram: @barisopress
Purchase Links
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Pintsized-Pioneers-Play-Homemade-Frontier/dp/1964830125/
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Pintsized%20Pioneers%20at%20Play
Giveaway
$5 Amazon Gift Card + eBook Copy
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