Westward to Home

I enjoy the books from the Dear America series. It gives a child's point of view of historical time periods. This book does a great job of telling the harsh truths of traveling and moving west in hopes during the time of Manifest Destiny.

This entire series is a wonderful way to learn history or teach it to adolescents. I find today's generations seem to recall more when they learn through other people (pop songs, celebrity gossip, etc.), so what better way to teach history than through someone else's perspective? Yes, "authentic" diaries would be "better", but would the language really hold the modern student's attention? Did the diary writer know what WOULD be important in the context of history? Probably not.

This book is historical fiction because there were pioneers that came to Oregon on the Oregon Trail. The events in the book could have happened to any wagon train that went west.
The style is effective for readers who are just moving into longer chapter books. This book is written as a diary of a young boy on the Oregon Trail. The reader is drawn into the story because the diary entries seem to be talking to the reader.
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I would most likely use this book in history class with 3rd-4th graders. Although it is a chapter book the vocabulary is not too difficult. I would most likely give my students a passage from this book to do as a choral read (to work on fluency) a few weeks before we got to the book in Social Studies. This way, they will be somewhat familiar with it already and it will help them improve their reading fluency.

In 1848, nine-year-old Joshua Martin McCullough writes a journal of his family's journey from Missouri to Oregon in a covered wagon. Includes a historical note about westward migration.

This story is about a boy that hopes he his cousins get to Oregon alive.It is a hard trip on the way the kids have to walk most of the way to Oregon.This book has lots of traveling,dangers idians,and blisters on the Oregon Trail!!

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