“Peppered with letters and diaries written by children and liberally illustrated with photographs of children in their best clothes, or hard at work, this is a book for the entire family to read, look at, savor, and enjoy."— Enriched by over 200 vintage photographs, is a visual and verbal montage of childhood in the nineteenth-century West. From a wide range of primary and secondary sources, Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith, well known for their books on western women, have brought together stories and images that erase the stereotypes and bring to life the infinite variety of the experience of growing up in the American West.