Go West, Young Man! Oregon Trail by Jesse Wiley

It's a double blast from the past--1850 and 1985!

The pioneers who braved the dread Oregon Trail, the wagon train journey from Independence, Missouri, over flooding rivers, snowbound and avalanche-prone Rocky and Cascades Mountain passes, and parched deserts, all the way to the West Coast, have been celebrated in history, novels and movies, and--in 1985-1995--in some of the very first classroom video games, to be played on the latest technology, the Apple II-e computer!

It was a real breakthrough in audio-visual teaching materials, joining the venerable 12mm film and filmstrips of old--a computer video game in which, instead of a Pacman scoring by chomping, the young player was challenged to role-play a wagon train family making their way through real hazards. Like the real pioneers of history, some of the hazards proved deadly or turned the would-be West Coast settlers back. American history had never been taught with this kind of fun and games, which also used another 1980s-style interactive literary venture, the multiple-outcome "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure"series, in which each choice sent them to another section of book or game to achieve success or meet disaster.

And indeed, in Jesse Wiley's new four-book series, The Oregon Trail (paperback boxed set plus poster map) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), middle readers will find that going westward was often a "doomed-if-you do, doomed-if-you-don't" proposition, with as many ways to fail--fatal snakebite, wolves, starvation, quicksand, river-fordings, outlaw gangs, and a malevolent moose--as faced the intrepid real pioneers themselves. Even precipitation could be hazardous to your health:

You sink back against the tree trunk and huddle into a tight ball. Your arm is on fire; it might even be broken. You wish you'd followed Tatsa to her village.

Suddenly a hailstone the size of a baseball knocks you in the head. You are concussed, and it will be days before you wake up. Your journey ends here.~THE END~

Amidst the page-turning adventures, there's a strong dose of reality which establishes a theme which is true for all times in history--CHOICES MATTER!

With different characters and episodes, the four choose-your-own pioneer accounts in this boxed set are Gold Rush!, (7) (The Oregon Trail) Alone in the Wild (The Oregon Trail), The Wagon Train Trek (The Oregon Trail), and Calamity in the Cold (The Oregon Trail Book 8), all with bibliography, maps, and guides to making it all the way, with famous real mountain guides who intercede, e.g., Jim Beckwith, John Bidwell, and Lewis Southworth, and this set is page-turning and engrossing introduction to a significant period of history.