He kept detailed notes throughout the wagon trip and also on the 2,100-mile return trip down the Missouri River by boat. Her waters were tinged with amber from the pines and fenlands of her upper reaches. Grove-clad islands of a haunting loveliness gave sanctuary to countless flocks of migrant waterfowl. Another teen boy, Noah Blake, began a diary in 1805 on his fifteenth birthday. Sloane is very interested in the wooden tools and details of construction during this era and has illustrated the book with wonderful sketches that bring the scenery, procedures, and implements described in the text to life.
Fourth graders can probably read it themselves.
Younger children might need help. Noah Blake's entries are short and factual, and he doesn't waste words writing a sentence when a phrase will do. Split shingle wood for a roof on the new bridge. Striking your axe in an exact spot, watching a log divide miraculously into segments and squares with single blows, or even learning to stack a simple pile of wood correctly, gives pleasure to the art of woodsmanship. Elsa, a precocious fifth-grade city girl from Detroit during the Great Depression, is forced by a sudden illness to spend the summer with her grandparents in a country cottage beside Lake Huron.