Syrup Pails and Gopher Tails is filled with precious memories of the one-room school, presented in the words of participants. John C. Charyk, author of the Little White Schoolhouse series, is intimately acquainted with the era of the one-room school; he began a teaching career of forty-five years in a small school in rural Alberta in 1928. Yet he has gone beyond his own considerable experience to enhance Syrup Pails and Gopher Tails with the best from interviews with over one hundred rural school teachers, students, and school officials. Their words bring immediacy to the portrayal of the life and the spirit of the one-room school.

A Canadian best-seller just a few weeks after publication, and now made available as an e-book, Syrup Pails and Gopher Tails combines amusing anecdotes and vivid memories to present an image of a great Canadian institution—the one-room school.