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.

Precious Resource: The Water Seeker by Kimberly Willis Holt

"When I was a boy, my pa dowsed to earn estra money when we had a lean year. And when he put the branch in my hands for the first time, I felt a burning inside me because I had the gift, too.

Just be thankful I didn't hand the gift down to you."

Amos figured it was probably best not to tell his father that it was too late.

It is 1833 when Jake leaves his new wife Delilah for the winter's trapping, and when he returns, he finds her dead and his motherless newborn being cared for by his brother Gil and his wife Rebecca. Childless, Rebecca loves Amos from the first moment he is put in her waiting arms, and Jake, restless, born with wander foot, gladly hands Amos over her and heads out to the mountains again in the fall.

But life on the frontier is hard, especially on its women, and when Rebecca dies of fever, Amos is passed to the care of neighbor Henrietta Block, to be raised with and by her four older boys. Amos is a self-contained child, and although pained deeply by the death of the dearly loved Rebecca, thrives under Henrietta's no-nonsense care.

But when Jake returns in 1841 with a Shoshone wife, Blue Owl, it is for Amos that he has come, and Amos begins a new life, one that will lead him to a long journey on the Oregon Trail. Amos is fortunate in his succession of mothers, for Blue Owl's first act is to make him moccasins to relieve the blisters caused by his boots as they begin their long walk to St. Louis. There Jake hires out as a scout and hunter in a wagon train, and as the group makes its way west, Amos grows from a child to a young man.

Life, death, and the depth of human bonds is at the center of Kimberly Willis Holt's sweeping novel of the westward movement, spanning decades in the history of one extended family as Amos survives the trek and builds a life in Oregon. Disappointed in his first love, Amos finds a deeper love with an unlikely young woman and at last returns to his gift of finding water for his newfound community.

Holt's latest, The Water Seeker (Henry Holt, 2010), combines gritty realism with a touch of magical realism in the form of Delilah's fierce but protective spirit, appearing, not to Amos (except in her avatar form as a bird), but to the succession of mothering women who anchor his life. As Kirkus Reviews says of this book "Drawing on such diverse themes as Manifest Destiny, personal identity and cross-cultural relationships, the author has crafted a satisfying all-ages story that hosts a dazzling array of richly realized secondary characters (including Jake's scene-stealing second wife, Blue Owl) and flows as effortlessly as the Platte River."

Jennifer Willis s Holt is the author of the award-winning My Louisiana Sky and the Newbery When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (Saddleback's Focus on Reading Study Guides), as well as her popular beginning chapter Piper Reed series.