My Way West

 

My Way West
By Elizabeth Goss
West Margin Press, 2021. Informational.

Based on true historical accounts and journals, "My Way West" tells about the experiences of kids ages 6-14 traveling West in the 1800s.  Each page tells about a different aspect of the travels and travails encountered on the Oregon and California trails by emigrants.  Each page also includes actual accounts from real children traveling on the trails at that time. Impacts on Native Americans already living on the land were included in some of the sections, as well as secondhand accounts of slaves forced to make the journey with their slave owners. 

I appreciated the author's efforts to include different perspectives in her book.  Although the majority of emigrants at the time were white, emigration at that time had a huge, mostly negative impact on the Native tribes already living in the places these people were trying to claim, and I was glad to see that she addressed that.  I think even more could been included, since the actions of the pioneers had such far reaching effects on the native people, but there was enough to illustrate that there were definite downsides to settlers expansion into the West and to start more in-depth conversations about those effects. I really liked the layout of the information because it was super simple to find the different topics and was well organized.  I think it would make a great resource for kids writing a paper about the subject.  My favorite part of the book were the true accounts included and the children's own words on what happened and how they felt. The stories and experiences of real people is what makes history meaningful and fascinating to me and I was glad for those inclusions in this book.