Customer Reviews

River of Dreams: The Story of the Hudson River

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The Hudson River has a rich and intriguing history, beginning with its formation from melting glaciers and continuing today as a conduit for commerce, transportation, and recreation. This "river that flows both ways" not only supported a large Native American population, including the Mohawks and the Mahicans, it also met explorer Henry Hudson in his quest to find the Dutch a new route to China.

Over the years, the Hudson River played an important role in the Revolutionary War, the development of transportation by boat, and the growth of New York City into America's largest port, industrial hub, and financial center. However, industrialization brought uncontrolled pollution until a new environmental movement pushed for legislation to protect the Hudson River Valley. With its focus on natural resources, economic development, and pollution, this book makes a valuable tool for engaging children in some lively conversations about economic history and environmental activism.

Exploration, history, environmental issues, and great illustrations make this a fun book to read yourself or to read to young children. Older children will be entranced by the story of the Hudson River as told by one of it's guardians. All rivers should have a Hudson Talbot kind of author write about them! I bought three- one for myself, one for my adult son and one for a friend of mine who is 5th grade teacher. Highly recommend to all!

My 13 year old granddaughter, who lives in NJ, recently read, My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George and became enthralled with the Catskill Mountain area. I have lived in the Mid-Hudson Valley, just below the Catskills, for my entire 65 years. I am well acquainted with the Hudson River. As a child, my father and I frequently went boating on and fishing in the waters of the Esopus Creek and the Hudson River. To this day, I live just a few miles west of the Hudson. I bought this book for my granddaughter for Christmas. It gives a wonderful historical account of the river and it's surrounding areas. The charming illustrations, intertwined with the storyline, holds one's attention as no history book could. One can tend to take for granted the place where they have lived all their life. This book gave me a new appreciation for just how historic and important this area is and how it played an important part in the forming of our nation. Everyone, young and old, who lives in the Hudson Valley or is interested in early colonial history, should read this book. I am now ordering a copy for myself. This is one that I want in my own personal library!

This is a beautiful book! Every fourth grader in New York State should be treated to this historical story of the Hudson River.Camp Kids And The Underwater Adventure (Camp Kids Books)

Hudson Talbott weaves together over three centuries of history to tell a tale of dreamers who were lured by the river that bore his name. With illuminating and wonderfully detailed illustrations, the book is organized around bite-sized themes and is perfect for 6-8 year olds.

Talbott's themes include the establishment of a Dutch trading post at the tip of Manhattan, the arrival of the British, the American Revolution, the birth of a new nation and the burgeoning commercial activity in the New York region in the early 1800s. The subsequent theme of the Hudson River as America's superhighway is conveyed largely pictorially. The impact that the region has had on literature and the arts is highlighted with snapshots of writer Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) and the Hudson River School of Painting. Next Talbott tackles the Industrial Revolution and the advent of railroads and briefly mentions the Gilded Age and the waves of immigrants flowing into New York harbor chasing their own dreams.

Coming on the heels of the big dreams that ushered in an era of unprecedented growth and prosperity, the latter half of the book is a cautionary tale about misusing this precious water resource. Now a resident of New York City and the Hudson Valley, Talbott sounds the clarion call to be responsible stewards of the river.

This wonderful book brings to life the history of New York state, from glaciers to Native Americans, to the chaining of the Hudson during Revolutionary times, how travel by water gave way to travel by train, as well as concepts of ecology including pollution, fish migrations & eagles. This exceptional work also features inspiring artwork. Teachers especially can use this work to cover many areas of their curriculum. It is very readable for kids and parents as well, and may inspire you to take a trip to see this great river which helped shape America.

Hudson Talbot takes you on an adventure, in his book about "America's First River." You discover the river through an personable narrative, woven with a flow of facts guiding you over time and landscapes. The illustrations engross. I every little caption compelled me to read it. Each cameo picture moved me to explore every corner of the river presented here.
Older children, most especially fourth graders, will be enchanted by River of Dreams. Talbot's filled a void for kids wanting to know why the river flows both ways, and what's so great about the Hudson River. They'll feel the river's majesty here. It's wonderfully engaging. I fell under a spell reading this non-fiction book, of the kind you only get when listening to a gripping adventure.
Telling children stories of the Hudson River professionally, I once found little to offer when kids asked for more on the Hudson. Now, I tell them to turn to River of Dreams!

The artwork in this book is beautiful, informative, and absolutely spot-on for the young reader. The text is dense, so perhaps the reader should not be *too* young; but this book works well for the middle-to-upper elementary reader and beyond. There is so much of the familiar here, interspersed with factoids not covered in basic history text books.

The details of the environmental movement are so pertinent, as most youngsters have at least some knowledge of an awareness of our environment.

A terrific book!

When Hudson Talbott was a young boy, he often dreamed of going to New York to actually see the Hudson River. It was a magical place for him, so much so that he actually ended his prayers with "God bless Mommy and Daddy, may I please have a horse and go to New York? Amen." Dreams really do come true. Little Hudson not only grew up and went to visit the river, but later wrote a history of the Hudson River for other children to learn and dream about.

During the Ice Age thousands of years ago the Hudson began to form, fed by the waters flowing down from the Adirondack Mountains and supplemented by the Atlantic waters. The Indians were the first to settle along the river in the Hudson Valley, later to be joined by settlers coming from across the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Henry Hudson, a British explorer and "one of the greatest dreamers of all time," was hired by the Dutch to sail the Half Moon in search of a quicker route to China. Of course he failed them, but his quest to the New World more than made up for the loss.

This concise history of the Hudson River covers everything from the Mahican Indians to the immigrant influx to Ellis Island to present day environmental concerns. The illustrations are variable and seem to catch the spirit of the moment on each page. They range from nostalgic realism to whimsical. There is an illustrated time line in the shape of a river that meanders through the book. There is a very large wallop of history contained in this book and the numerous, busy illustrations compliment it perfectly. Hudson (both the river and the man) can make history fun!

"On the Hudson there was always the opportunity to be educated deeply in the heart. The beauty of the landscape did the rest, along with the magic of the moon, the river's hot and reedy bays, the glittering silver ice, days of summer or days of snow submerged in an ocean of clear blue air, fields never-ending, the wind from Canada, and the great city to the south."
-- from WINTER'S TALE by Mark Helprin (1983)

"...Down the Valley one million toilet chains
Find my Hudson so convenient place to drain
And each little city says. 'Who, me?
Do you think that sewage plants come free?'"
-- from "My Dirty Stream (The Hudson River Song)" by Pete Seeger (1961)

"The water turned greenish brown, except by the GM plant, where it turned red or yellow or whatever color that they were painting the cars that day."

I grew up knowing of the Hudson as a river that was dead and only getting worse, the tainted lifeblood of a region that must have been awfully beautiful at some point in a previous century. As a Boy Scout I was occasionally in the vicinity of the river, participating in weekend campouts at Bear Mountain and, once, touring the grounds of the U.S. Military Academy. In my early years of raising and showing dairy goats, I would glimpse the river as I drove Upstate to fairgrounds in the Hudson Valley and beyond.

"When George Washington made his headquarters on a steep cliff overlooking the river, it became the most important military post in the country. Known as West Point, it had views of all boat traffic in both directions. The river wrapped around its base, forcing ships to slow down and to come into easy range of cannon fire. Washington called West Point the 'key to America.'"

In RIVER OF DREAMS, Hudson Talbott, who illustrated Jacqueline Woodson's beautiful Newbery Honor book SHOW WAY, leads readers on a four-century visual tour de force of the River with whom he shares a name. Incorporating natural history, colonial and American history, art and literary history, science, technology, and the environmental movement into a visual celebration of all things Hudson, Talbott demonstrates repeatedly how this river has played a unique and pivotal role in America over the four centuries since Henry Hudson first navigated it in September of 1609.

The river's importance has grown in step with the nation:

"George Washington had once envisioned a canal across New York State, connecting the waters of Lake Erie to the Hudson. Governor Dewitt Clinton picked up the dream, and finally saw it completed in 1825. Three hundred and sixty-three miles long, forty feet wide and only four feet deep, its nickname switched overnight from 'Clinton's Ditch' to the 'Eighth Wonder of the World.'
"Suddenly the great, untapped heartland of America was connected to the world by water. New York-to-Cleveland travel time went from ninety days by land to thirty days by water. The price of grain dropped from ninety cents a pound to nine cents as Midwest farm products flooded eastward...The Hudson became America's first superhighway, and it made New York City into the greatest marketplace on earth. Money was pouring into the city from all directions."

The river has given and Americans have taken. Over the centuries, businessmen and business concerns large and small benefited -- in the short run -- from exploiting the Hudson River, but the long term effects to health and to the quality of life have been well-documented (if not as obvious as the tip of one's nose).

"From approximately 1947 to 1977, the General Electric Company (GE) discharged as much as 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from its capacitor manufacturing plants at the Hudson Falls and Fort Edward facilities into the Hudson River."
-- from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website

The U.S. environmental movement began in the sixties in the Hudson Valley, thanks to the way the river was mercilessly exploited, and while it has taken the better part of a lifetime to turn things around, many things are now getting better. Toward the end of RIVER OF DREAMS we learn of the increasing fish, osprey and bald eagle populations and how there are people actually swimming in the Hudson these days.

"I would explain that the Hudson was a 'drowned' river, up to about Poughkeepsie. The Ice Age had depressed the river bed to a depth that allowed the Atlantic Ocean to flood inland. Consequently, the lower Hudson was really a saltwater estuary."
--from MY AMERICAN JOURNEY by General Colin Powell (whose undergrad was Geology)

Hudson Talbott's paintings flow through the 400 years of "civilization" on the river. The illustrations include maps, depictions of the various sailing and steam vessels, the process of ice harvesting, the work of the Hudson River School of painting, and images of important characters in the story of the Hudson such as King James II, Washington Irving, Franny Reese, and Pete Seeger. An exceptionally notable two-page spread reveals a bucolic scene of sloops plying the river and cows in a meadow into which a coal-burning locomotive comes (literally) ripping through the page charging toward us.

A visual love song for all who have first-hand experience with the Hudson, for all who have read stories set along the Hudson, and for all who know it up to now only as a thick line of blue on a map of America, RIVER OF DREAMS is an inspiring and beautiful picture book for older readers who -- with a little luck and the help of librarians -- will hopefully become the next generation of Riverkeepers.