Caddie Woodlawn

Caddie Woodlawn is a children's historical novel by Carol Ryrie Brink, published in 1935 and awarded the Newbery Medal in 1936. The first edition was illustrated by Kate Seredy, and the book was based on stories the author heard about her own grandmother's childhood in Wisconsin.

Caddie is eleven, and her mother wants her to stop running with her brothers and begin behaving as a young lady of the period. The farm is full of work and of neighbours, among them the local Native American community, and Caddie's curiosity involves her in the business of both: a trip to town, a runaway horse and an argument about a scalp belt all have consequences she has to live with.

Brink writes from family stories and gives the frontier as a place of hard labour and ordinary mischief rather than of battles. It is one of the best-known American children's books of the 1930s and remained in print through many editions, and it is read as a family story that was passed down rather than invented.