Mississippi Mud: Three Prairie Journals [Library Binding]

Ann Warren Turner (Author), Robert J. Blake (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 7 and up

Amanda and her family are on a wagon train west from Kentucky to Oregon. They hope for a new life and a fresh start on free land that isn’t worn out and used up. Amanda and her two brothers each keep a journal of the trip to remind them of their adventures. Each one sees the same things, but through different eyes and from different hearts, and each will remember the trip in a very different way. Share these three prairie journals and open a page of American history full of all the hopes and fears of a pioneer family.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 2-6?To describe this book simply as a collection of poetry would be an injustice. This is historical fiction in the form of verse. The poems portray the feelings, experiences, and observations of three pioneer children in a family leaving a barren farm in Kentucky for the hope of free, rich soil in Oregon. The images Turner creates are stunning. The lone survivor of an ambush comes out of an ox-hide tent "foot first, like a babe born the wrong way." The sky is as "pink as our baby's face." In "Jake," a poem about the family dog who trotted beside the wagon until his body simply wore out, the young narrator tersely reveals his grief with honest emotion. "Columbia" describes the birth of the youngest child in a wagon en route. Ma's cries were "like birds being killed in the sky." The baby on her chest was "a red scrap that mewled and howled just like a cat." Blake's watercolor illustrations elegantly capture the scenery in warm earth tones with a delightful attention to detail. One picture shows the cold air blowing from the nose of a horse mounted for an early morning ride. In others, the children's faces evoke the fear, the joy, and the pensiveness expressed in the poems. Some books are breathtaking in every respect. This is one of them.?Jackie Hechtkopf, Talent House School, Fairfax,
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 4^-8. As she did in Grass Songs (1993), Turner personalizes the nineteenth-century movement west with plainspoken poems in the voices of ordinary people. This time, the focus is on one family's journey from Kentucky to Oregon, told through the journals kept by the three older children. There is not much to distinguish the three journals in voice or subject. Amanda dreams of freedom, where she can run and shout "with no one to tell me / I was not a lady." Her brothers also dream of home and adventure. Together they tell the family story of the heartbreaking leaving ("Gran and Grandpa gripping the porch rail / as if they could not stand"); the crucial events on the way (including the death of their dog and the birth of their baby sister in the wagon); and, finally, their arrival in a new land to build a home. The poems are printed on Blake's handsome double-page paintings that show the pioneer wagon moving across the prairie in sunlight and shadow, the strong, hopeful people looking out at grass and sky. Hazel Rochman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 7 and up
  
• Library Binding: 48 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006024433X
• ISBN-13: 978-0060244330
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,692,559 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in a small town in Western Massachusetts to creative parents who always encouraged my writing and painting. I went to Bates College, majored in English, and spent a wonderful year abroad in Oxford, England, giving me a taste for neat Scotch, Evensong, and very old churches and buildings. I've been married long enough to break all records and have two grown children. I am especially drawn to telling stories about outsiders, rebellious girls, and people who don't fit in--as I didn't growing up. I was always a bit too loud, too passionate, moved too fast, made up too many stories, and thought that life moved just a tad too slowly for me. I love to cook, garden, swim, pet my wild Jack Russell terrier, talk to friends and my "kids," and laugh at my husband's wild, original stories. I also actually answer letters and emails sent to me by fans, and when I do school visits, I tell people--"Don't ever let anyone tell you you can't do it!"