Hattie Big Sky is a novel written by Kirby Larson. In 2007 the book was named a Newbery Honor book [1] and an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. [2] Hattie Big Sky was also an Illinois Rebecca Caudill nominee.
The protagonist is Hattie Brooks, a sixteen-year-old orphan who has tired of being shuffled among relatives she hardly knows. Frustrated with her situation, she decides to move by herself to her uncle's abandoned homestead in Montana. In the book we learn about Hattie through her letters to her friend Charlie who is at war and to her Uncle Holt.
The story is based on bits of Larson's own family history. Her great-grandmother, Hattie Brooks, was a teenage homesteader on a plot of land in Montana in 1914. When Larson heard stories about her life on the Montana plains, she became interested in researching and writing about her.[3]