The Oregon Trail Book

Examines the famous westward route of American settlement during the 1800s, including everyday life on the trail, what it took to make the journey successfully, and what ...

School Library Journal

Gr 4-8-These books are hybrids: they are jazzy, visually appealing, and interestingly written, but they also share elements of quality textbooks, focusing on the basic facts of each episode and providing explication of terms and sidebars with detailed notes. Each title provides a time line, suggestions for further readings (of fairly recent publication if not of exceptional quality), and related places of interest. The titles seem designed to enhance a unit of study, provide resources for reports, and perhaps engage students for whom history is a dull subject. However, with the overriding purpose of being accessible to elementary-or challenged middle school- readers, the complexities and nuances of American history are reduced to simplistic and abbreviated versions of events. For example, Oregon Trail introduces Marcus and Narcissa Whitman as examples of people who emigrated for religious purposes-but their ultimate fate (massacre by Cayuse Indians) is not mentioned. The Mormon emigration and Mexican War are each dispatched with two paragraphs, and the Transcontinental Railroad gets a brief page. If a library needs additional materials on these perennial curriculum topics, these books could work, but the World Book Encyclopedia provides as much information and Rhoda Blumberg's What's the Deal? Jefferson, Napoleon & the Louisiana Purchase (National Geographic, 1998) and The Incredible Journey of Lewis & Clark (Morrow, 1995) cover both topics much better.-Nancy Collins-Warner, Neill Public Library, Pullman, WA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.