Reviews

Children of the Covered Wagon by Bob Kuhn, Mary Jane Carr

cerapp555's review

3.0

So this book was a pain in the butt to find. I managed to find a copy of it through Archive.org, but I had to renew the ebook every hour. Luckily no one else really seemed interested in reading the book. The only reason I read it was so I could watch the movie Disney made based off of it. It wasn’t a bad book. I actually found it to be pretty educational. The Oregon trail was pretty deadly and this helps show kids some of the perils that people went through to help expand our nation. I did enjoy the story that was told and the conflict between the pioneers and the Native Americans was explored. Was it common for the Native Americans to try and steal children from pioneers? I honestly had never heard that before.

One of my favorite things about the book was the addition of all of the pictures. I thought that it added to the story and allowed us to see the characters.

MVP: Dr. Dean

triscuit807's review

4.0

4 stars solid. Highly recommended. I'm really pleased to have read this book - which wouldn't have happened if I hadn't read her "Young Mac of Fort Vancouver". I have to remind myself that this was written in 1934 because the author did a fantastic job balancing the clash of cultures, white and native. There are no heathens and savages in this book, just people who were worried what the relentless waves of whites would mean for them. And the emigrants (I love she used this term) knew they were invading/crossing lands that weren't theirs. There was misunderstanding, but Carr didn't resort to belittling the First Peoples' customs, but explained what the conflict was. If Carr has a prejudice it's in favor of the trappers and voyageurs who lived mostly harmoniously with the land and the native peoples. I recognized some of the landmarks mentioned here from having read Buck's "The Oregon Trail". It would be interesting to the two: Buck's which re-created the journey of these wagons with a 3 mule team with Carr's whose wagons used oxen and for whom the trail ended with a float down the Columbia. There is a section of trail that Buck describes as extremely difficult in which he had the brakes on constantly. Likewise Carr describes a section where the boys' job was to keep the wagons' wheels 'locked', braking the descent. What continuously surprises me reading these historical novels is the barefootedness of the children (Little House books and here) in all but winter (20th century privilege and wealth, I suppose). I read this for my 2019 Reading Challenge.