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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. ( )

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.

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.