PINTSIZED PIONEERS AT PLAY:

Homemade Frontier Fun and Danger

By Preston Lewis & Harriet Kocher Lewis

Young Adult / Nonfiction / History

Publisher: Bariso Press

Pages: 218

Publication Date: 4 November 2025

Synopsis

Discover the Wild Side of Frontier Childhood!

Pintsized Pioneers at Play: Homemade Frontier Fun and Danger explores the forgotten world of how kids lived, laughed, and sometimes limped through their childhood years in the Old West.

While their parents settled the land, these pintsized pioneers explored it, creating their own adventures with homemade toys, daring games, wild animal encounters, and risky escapades. This engaging sequel to the award-winning Pintsized Pioneers: Taming the Frontier, One Chore at a Time shines a spotlight on the joys and perils of play in a land still being tamed.

From exploring the prairie and wrangling critters to celebrating frontier holidays and watching traveling circuses, this book reveals how children carved out fun and entertainment in a rough-and-tumble world. Learn how railroads and mail-order catalogs brought new toys, how schools and churches doubled as social hubs, and how a simple game could end in laughter or injury.

Written for young adults but fascinating for readers of all ages, Pintsized Pioneers at Play is packed with history, heart, and a hint of danger. Written at a tenth-grade reading level perfect for curious minds, Pintsized Pioneers at Play includes a glossary of related terms.

Perfect for fans of Western history, educators, homeschoolers, and lovers of untold American stories!

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Review

This is the second in a series about the young pioneers who help shape the frontier.

We learned about how they worked from a very young age; no one was immune from work in the first book. This novel takes us into how they played to offset the chores they helped their family perform. If you have read any historical fiction or watched shows set in that timeframe, you might have gotten a glimpse into that world. What you may not realize is that not all of their play was safe! Children were injured or killed in various games they played, no different from today, but some of their games were tougher than what children today might play.

I appreciate the research that the authors put into this book and sharing stories from 100+ years ago. The book is chock-full of memories and news stories that shared the games, tragedies, and fun that these pintsized pioneers had. The stories show the joy and danger that these children experienced. The stories span Texas, Oklahoma, and beyond, from the early to the late 1800s. Play included simple toys such as marbles, dolls, and more. There is even a chapter dedicated to Santa Claus and how the children’s desires grew through merchants’ advertising.

This novel may be geared towards young adults, but anyone can enjoy it. It might bring back memories of stories told by grandparents and other family members.

If you are looking for a book to learn more about life for pioneer children, then look no further than this series!

We give it 5 paws up.

About the Authors

Preston Lewis and Harriet Kocher Lewis co-authored three books in the “Magic Machine Series” published by Bariso Press:  Devotionals from a Soulless Machine, Jokes from a Humorless Machine, and Recipes from a Tasteless Machine. They reside in San Angelo, Texas.

Preston Lewis has published more than 50 fiction and nonfiction works.  The author and historian’s books include traditional Westerns, historical novels, comic Westerns, young adult books, and historical accounts.  In 2021 he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters for his literary accomplishments.

His writing honors include two Spur Awards from Western Writers of America and three Elmer Kelton Awards from the West Texas Historical Association.  He has received ten Will Rogers Medallion Awards, and in 2024, he earned an inaugural Literary Global Independent Author Award in the Western Nonfiction category for Cat Tales of the Old West.

He is a past president of Western Writers of America and the West Texas Historical Association, which named him a fellow in 2016.

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Harriet Kocher Lewis is the award-winning editor and publisher of Bariso Press. Titles she has edited have been honored with Will Rogers Medallion Awards, Spur Finalist designations, and Independent Author Awards.

Lewis concluded her 26-year physical therapy career as the inaugural clinical coordinator for the physical therapy program at Angelo State University, where she taught technical writing and wrote or edited numerous scientific papers as well as a chapter in a clinical education textbook.

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