What If You Met a Cowboy?

by Jan Adkins, Jan Adkins (Illustrator)

Overview

You know all about cowboys, right? They're the good guys in the white hats, carrying six-shooters and wearing fancy boots.

Well, no. Cowboys weren't like that at all. Come inside and meet Jake Peavy. He's the real deal. Jake's a crackerjack cattle herder but he wears a grubby hat and he limps from when that horse fell on him. He's small, wiry, has bad teeth, and it's been a while since he washed. Come spend some time with Jake, his saddlemates, and his fleas. You'll learn all about riding the range, roping dogies, and surviving in the down-and-dirty world that was the REAL wild West.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466844841
Publisher:	Roaring Brook Press
Publication date:	08/27/2013
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	48
File size:	17 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Jan Adkins is the author of books including Bridges: From My Side to Yours and What If You Met a Knight? He lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Editorial Reviews

Adkins, who illustrates his book with handsome sepia-based pen-and-ink sketches, can really turn a phrase, and his detailed histories of cattle in the United States and the varieties and uses of barbed wire are pithy as well as fascinating.

The New York Times Book Review - Sarah Harrison Smith

"Adkins, who illustrates his book with handsome sepia-based pen-and-ink sketches, can really turn a phrase, and his detailed histories of cattle in the United States and the varieties and uses of barbed wire are pithy as well as fascinating."—New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

2014-05-19
Following other books in the What if You Met…(a Pirate, 2004; a Knight, 2006) series, this title somewhat less successfully tackles the subject of cowboys. The image of the handsome cowboy idealized in movies, “on the lookout for pretty schoolteachers and Indians on the warpath,” is shattered by Jacob McHugh Peavey, the “real deal,” unwashed and unshaven. Only careful readers will determine that Jake’s heyday was around 1860-1885. He’s white, although Adkins notes that “[a]bout half of [cowboys] are African-American, Indian, or Hispanic.” Cowgirls are dismissed in a side note. Given this limited perspective, youngsters interested in diversity in the Wild West will want to look elsewhere. Those not familiar with the history of Native Americans may require a source to understand potentially confusing descriptions of Franciscan missionaries who introduced horses in the Southwest as “relatively gentle and patient” conquerors who received an assist from European diseases or the “hostile native” tribes or youth that may on occasion pose a threat to Jake. (Source notes—a list of titles consulted—are provided, but there are no specific citations.) However, children enamored of cowboy gear and cattle drives will find a plethora of information about and detailed illustrations of saddles, guns, brands, the chuck wagon and more, each topic covered in one or two pages. As Wild Bill Hickok “says” in his blurb: “Factual as far as it goes.” (glossary, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 8-10)

Kirkus Reviews