Growing up in coal country

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The story of the children was absolutely heartbreaking. Bartoletti is truly passionate about this subject and the passion is evident. The story read like a novel and the Black and White photographs are compelling. I enjoyed this author's storytelling and will look up

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more books by her. Although the story is told about events that happened over a century ago, child exploitation is still very relevant. It was also interesting to find out the origins of historical figures such as Mother Jones, names I had heard of but didn't know the background of.

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Growing Up in Coal Country was an awe-inspiring non-fiction story about the men, women, and children who did backbreaking work for extremely long hours and little money in the 1900's. This book would make a great addition to my science classroom when we are discussing renewable and non-renewable

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energy sources, such as coal, to make it more personable to the students who have never seen coal, much less know how it was mined.

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As a future Social Studies teacher, I would use this book for a few purposes. First, I may assign each student a section or chapter and have them present the subject/topic to the class. I would read aloud different sections concerning economics, class structure, and immigration to help students

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relate the Social Studies curriculum to historical events. Lastly, I would love to have students find pictures and write about them. We did this in class and I think the quality of the pictures in this book would really help older students read pictures as well as they read words.

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This book was insightful for me because I have not read much concerning Coal Country in Pennsylvania. I thought the perspective from which the author wrote gave the topic more depth and made it more convincing. The author, as a descendant of immigrants who lived on and in coal country, successfully

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told the stories of many others who worked and lived off the mines. I thought the book did a great job walking the reader through the daily work lives of the miners from the youngest to the eldest. I thought the book was organized well, separating chapters into the different realities of life in coal country. The book was honest about what work was like, what the pay was like and the commonness of death and danger. There were times in the text, however, where I felt the text was in-cohesive or choppy because of the way quotes were inserted. The pictures aligned well with what the book described. Every time the author described an event or the daily occurrence in the mines she had a photograph to illustrate the point. Overall, a great text for learning about a subject that is not often talked about.

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In “Growing Up in Coal Country,” Bartoletti pulls together the different voices of the people who worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania in the early 1900’s. Fitting to the title, the book is organized in the way that a person’s life would as they grow up in the coal mines and the

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communities that spawned from this industry. She begins by describing the deplorable work conditions experienced by even the youngest workers doing the work that only young workers were allowed to do, such as the “breaker boys.” As the book progresses, we learn how their jobs would change, though the conditions never really does get much better. We learn about their family lives and unfortunate living conditions in “patch villages.” We also learn about tragedy and death that comes for the coal mines. Just when this story is at its bleakest, we learn about triumphs and victories, small and large, which come from the strikes and the determination of these hardworking people.

This is an interesting book that makes good use of photographs. The stories within, paired with the pictures, would seemingly capture and hold the attention of many young readers. There is no short of drama, as there is humor, tragedy, death, and triumph. Bartoletti packs all of this into a concise story and an easy read. There is a lesson here about working in industry before we had labor laws, or at least any with any teeth, and the role of labor unions in this period. It also demonstrates the determination of these people, largely immigrants, to overcome their plight and better themselves.

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The photographs in this book are amazing. When our group was asked to analyze one of the photographs from this book in class, it was very hard to narrow down our selection. The miners' stories of back-breaking work and barely tolerable living conditions make one embarrassed by being concerned with

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superfluous things today. Bartoletti's weaving of quotations, narrative, and photographs allows the reader a glimpse into the lives of the mischievous boy miners, superstitious adult miners, mules with minds of their own, and also hard-working mothers and children at home. This would be a great book to introduce students to this aspect of "the people's history" as well as techniques for analyzing photographs.

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To read this book and look at its pictures is to enter an alien world. This feeling owes as much to strange underground landscape occupied by the coal miners as it does to the not-so-distant memory of this country's disregard for the welfare of children. Bartoletti captures daily life above and

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below ground for the miners and their families with vivid detail. The photographs she has collected are haunting.

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"This school will never amount to nothing until its organized."

This book does a fairly impressive job of turning a lot of different stories about coal country and the child labor that surrounded it into a coherent narrative about the highs and lows of a life based around the coal industry. There

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are many things that this book did right:
-It interviews many people that actually worked in the coal mines as children
-It compares the homes that the rich mine-owners lived in to the rows of company houses that the miners occupied
-The author provides a great deal of photographic evidence to support her book.
-The author obviously did a good deal of research in writing this book, as the bibliography is pretty extensive for a children's book.
-Labor is mentioned in a positive and productive light, but also mentioned are the hardships on the families that strike, the unemployment that follows, and the intimidation of scab workers. I was also impressed with the quotes from children in the labor movement. They were touching, and I'm surprised the author found any at all.
-The quotes in the book that begin each chapter are very well chosen and very poignantly describe life as a coal worker.
-Writing about the cruelty of the mine bosses is an excellent way of displaying what drove miners to turn to organized labor.

Overall, this is an excellent book in the field of regional studies, coal, organized labor, and child labor. I would recommend it for ages 11&up.

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I have enjoyed reading books of Bartoletti and this text did not disappoint. This was my first experience reading about coal country from this perspective and I found it quite interesting. I find myself most interesting in the nonfiction texts that read like a narrative and I think many students,

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especially students in middle school, may share this appreciation. Additionally, some of the images in this book are more descriptive than Bartoletti's already vivid text; I think this is another characteristic that may appeal to students. Growing Up in Coal Country would be an excellent text to supplement Social Studies lessons on this time period.

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Growing Up in Coal Country takes its readers to the heart of the coal mining industry in the United States. This book provided a very well-rounded description of the coal miner's lives, from the different job descriptions, to their superstitions, to the experiences of the women and children. While

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I was previously aware of the hardships faced by the men in this profession, this book opened my eyes to the child labor issues that were so prevalent in this industry. I felt this book was well organized and that each the stories and hardships discussed in each chapter built up to the climatic final showdown of the striking miners against the coal companies. This book would help stimulate excellent compare and contrast discussions related to child labor and/or visions of what constitutes a childhood, particularly with middle school students.

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This book underscores the grueling, dangerous, and inhuman conditions that families suffered through in Coal Country. Child labor was an especially disturbing topic--many children forces to work in order to support their families, often losing limbs or dying as a result of unsafe conditions. A

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majority of the children quit school at young ages to help support their families.
The men who worked in the mines didn't have it any better--often dying from cave ins or inescapable fires. Those who didn't die were often crippled and lost the ability to provide for their families.
Bartoletti uses many first person accounts to help readers truly understand how these people lived and felt. I think it is a great book to discuss human rights, child labor, the industrial revolution, immigration, or even class differences. It's a fairly gruesome book however--the photographs providing vivd images--and I'd only use it in a 6th and up classroom.

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The story of Appalachian children who worked in the coal industry at the turn of the century. Bartoletti shows the harsh life of these mountain children and how different the world was for them than it is for most of today's children.

As an American History teacher, I would use the book in three ways. The first way is to show the natural and economic resources of an area. A benchmark standard of American History is the discussion of the natural resources found in states or regions of the country and the economy of the state or

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region. I would use this book to compare and contrast the slave labor of the South and the poor living conditions of these free people in the North. The third way to use this book is to talk about immigration of Europeans to America before the Civil War. Many of the European immigrants settled in mining and manufacturing states and counties across the country. Many of these immigrant workers were men and children. The children often dropped out of school to help work. More hands working meant more money for families. This book illustrates the struggles and hardships of working class people in this country.

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The harsh realities of the coal business show the need for workers and children's labor laws. The exploitation of both the people and the land in the name of profit was horrifying. Bartoletti uses images from her own family's history, those from mining archives, and stories from first person

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accounts to make the life of those in the coal industry vivid in the minds of those with no other frame of reference. The personal connection that the author had to the subject comes across in her descriptions of the cart boys, the miners, and even the mules.

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Growing up in Coal Country by Suzanne Bogolettia
1830'a Boys growing up in Northeast PA area where coal mines were mined.
Damp, dark silence for low pay, it's where the immigrants went to start out in US.
Stories of how the boys unite and fight against unfair work ethics and how women stuck together

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to maintain their heritage.
Liked hearing of birds and other animals and how they played a big part in coal mining.
So educational with the detailed descriptions of the various jobs the boys worked at.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

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I enjoyed this book though it was sad to read. I love Bartoletti and how she brings such stark realism to the reader in a way that is easy to understand even if it is not pleasant to know.

This is a story of the plight of children who had to work in the coal mines in Pennsylvania in the late 1800s and early 1900s, before there were laws that protected them. Very heart wrenching facts about the hardships they endured. The author had past family members who actually worked in these

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mines. This is a very good book for educating older children about the history and hardships of our country.

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