Customer Reviews

The Abernathy Boys

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I want to review this book, the Abernathy Boys, because it is the best book I ever read!! I live in Chicago but I like to read about cowboys. This book is about two kids who go on their horses all across the wild west. They do it all by themselves without their parents. The most amazing part is that the story is true and really happened in 1909! The two kids were Bud and Temp Abernathy and they were only 9 and 5 years old when it happened. I am 10 and wish I could go with my brother on horses like they did. They get through quicksand, rattlesnakes, wolves and lots of other adventures and get all the way from Oklahoma to New Mexico. I won't say how it ends. When you read this book just remember it is true! I loved this book.

Hands-down, this is the best book my boys and I read this year. A great true adventure of boy-hood.

Ever wonder what a "Vinegaroon" is? The boys find one on their journey through the west!

This is a great book about the bond of brothers, and what it means to grow up... even if you're still a kid.

Both kids have been riding horses almost before they could walk. The younger boy likes insects, and dreams of being like his older brother.

The boys are 9 and 5 when they go on their journey through the west, meeting all kinds of people and situations. (They go with their father's permission.)

It's an unusually well-drawn portrait of brothers relating to each other.

The journey is really interesting and keeps you reading.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, because it's interesting, it's based on a true story, and because of the vinegaroons! (An actual, stinging insect that lives on the desert.)

This book is a good work of fiction, but continues to mythologize an exploitation of two children that should never have been tolerated, much less aggrandized. The trek was likely made at their father's urging ("Catch 'em Alive Jack" Abernathy) in order to distract from investigations into his execution (or lack thereof) of a federal post. It may have also been to simply attract attention, sympathy and money. Abernathy was a showman, con artist, braggart and all around P. T. Barnum who met Theodore Roosevelt when he was president and milked it forever more. He was also my g-g-great uncle. My research into his character has left me -- shall we say -- unimpressed.