This is a book about one of Oklahoma's own cowboys. Will Rogers was born in Indian Territory and grew up on his parents ranch. All he ever wanted to do was be a cowboy and rope. When he was eighteen years old he left military school and found a job on a ranch in Texas. One day after Will won a steer roping contest he wondered of people would pay to see him do roping and riding tricks. He then went to New York and was later hired to work in the Ziegfeld Follies. It was there that he did roping tricks and told funny stories. He loved making people laugh.
This was a nice to book to read about Will Rogers. I remember watching his movies with my Dad when I was young. I didn't know that he was part Cherokee Indian. I thought that was a interesting fact.
This would be a good book to read to the class and talk about people from Oklahoma and cowboys. My son is a steer roper. I could have him bring his roping dummy to school and let the students try and rope it. ( )

Will Rogers is a brief biography of the life of Willie Rogers. Willie Rogers grew up on Indian Territory which later became Oklahoma. He grew up on a ranch and watched as the cowboys worked the cattle and that is all he longed to do with his life. His father, however, wanted his son to continue his education but Willie decided he was done with school and dropped out. He began to call himself Will and he went on to work on ranches in Texas but as the years passed the old way of moving cattle was slowly being replaced with new types of transportation. Will found himself using his roping skills yet again by going to roping contests. He later used his roping skills on stage and performed them as a show. After he married, he left the show stage of roping and movies.

I guess I didn't realize that Will Rogers was really Willie and I did not know that he was from Oklahoma! I liked the way this book was written and how it highlighted the major points in his life!

One classroom extension I would use off of this book would be to have the class discover their special talent and see how we could imnplement them into our studies! Another I would also use would be to have the students look into their ancestry and research someone that they found to be interesting and tell of the history.