This article discusses how, following in the footsteps of United States imperial children's writers Jacob Abbott and Edward Stratemeyer, Mary Hazelton Blanchard Wade (1860-1936), the original author of the "Our Little Cousins" series (1901-1905), contributed to the American culture of empire. Wade was one of the most prolific and popular imperialistic turn-of-the-twentieth-century American children's authors. Yet, she remains understudied and virtually unknown, except among a few scholars who have examined, briefly, a few of her most prominent texts. Given Wade's current popularity within certain Christian Evangelical homeschooling circles, and the resurgence of imperialist and othering discourses as part of the War on Terror, revealing her project and understanding its messages and relevance for the twenty-first century, is today all the more urgent.