Lisa Waller Rogers

After a two-month siege by Texan volunteers in late 1835, the Mexican Army surrendered San Antonio and retreated across the Rio Grande. Texas colonists, including fictive young diarist Belle Wood, rejoiced. No one expected more trouble from Mexico. Belle wasn't even worried when, in late January 1836, her brother, Mac, followed Colonel Travis to the Alamo. The troop build-up was ""just a precautionary measure.""Just three weeks later, Mexican General Santa Anna arrived in San Antonio with thousands of troops, taking the 150 Alamo men by surprise. When the Alamo fell, ""the news came upon me like a clap of thunder,"" Belle wrote. ""My brother, Mac, is dead.""As the colonists learned that Santa Anna was continuing his march eastward, panic ensued. All over Texas, people either joined the fight for independence or fled for safety in the mass exodus known as the Runaway Scrape.Belle's diary tells how her family joins the throng heading east for the U.S. border, walking or riding in every kind of vehicle imaginable. Theirs is a miserable, month-long journey. Belle endures rain, cold, and mud-drenched prairies. Danger and death are ever present. ""Today,"" Belle mourns, ""we watched a woman bury her baby girl. Her limp little body stayed down in the soggy grave for scarcely a moment before it bobbed back up again and floated to the top.""Extensive primary-source research forms the foundation of Belle's authentic diary account. Its historical appendix, complete with photos and map, will be useful to young readers and teachers alike.

More than a century later, the Galveston hurricane of 1900 is still the largest natural disaster in American history. Pounding most of the historic island city to rubble, and claiming perhaps as many as eight thousand lives, the storm stranded Galveston’s stunned survivors without a bridge to the mainland. When the bridge was rebuilt, amazingly in eleven days, only the most stalwart—like fictive young diarist J. T. King—would choose to stay. Before the storm, J. T. is a normal, active teenager, swimming, riding his bike, and getting into scrapes with his best friend, Ippy. Though J. T. sleeps on a rickety cot in the pantry of his grandmother’s boardinghouse, life at the corner of Q1/2 and 25th Streets is as secure as the sturdy old house itself. But when the hurricane hits, brave and compassionate J. T. is poised to weather and record for all time the greatest storm any American has ever survived. Extensive primary-source research forms the backbone of J. T.’s thrilling authentic and richly detailed diary. The historical appendix, complete with photos and map, is invaluable to young readers and teachers alike.

Life is so unfair to girls! We need adventure too. It's spring of 1878 on the Rockin'W, and Hallie Lou Wells is as cross as any fourteen-year-old redhead has a right to be. Roundup is over; Hallie's father will soon drive the cattle to Dodge City - and only boys are allowed to go on trail drives! But in country where anything can happen, something does. When Mr. Wells learns that Mrs. Wells is having another baby, he decides to stay home. Hallie persuades him to let her take his place on the drive. Hallie's Chisholm Trail diary, rich with depictions of ranch and trail life, is filled with adventures to engage any preteen reader, girl or boy.

As any social studies or reading teacher will tell you, instilling in middle readers the ardent realization that they have stories of their own to record that their day-to-day lives are history, too is just as important as getting them to read. This companion writing journal encourages youngsters to chronicle their daily lives just as Hallie Lou Wells and the other protagonists of Lisa Waller Roger's ""Lone Star Journals"" do. Each journal has a title page for the young scribes to personalize and ninety-four generously ruled pages.