The Great Railroad Race: The Diary of Libby West, Utah Territory 1868 (Dear America Series) - Hardcover

Gregory, Kristiana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 059010991X ISBN 13: 9780590109918

Publisher: Scholastic Inc., 1999

Synopsis

As the daughter of a newspaper reporter, fourteen-year-old Libby keeps a diary account of the exciting events surrounding her during the building of the railroad in the West in 1868

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Reviews

Grade 4-6-In 1868, 14-year-old Libby West and her family leave Denver for Cheyenne. Her father and his young friend Pete are working as "stringers," eyewitness reporters covering the race to complete a transcontinental railroad. In her diary, Libby records her observations and her family's adventures as they follow the Union Pacific builders. The author does a good job of integrating information about the period into the story and depicting the girl's confusion over which of the many conflicting news stories to believe about the railroad. Both plot and characters are well developed. Readers will enjoy Libby's friendship with Ellie, a girl she meets on her travels, and the beginnings of her romance with Pete. While the diary ends on the last day of the race, an epilogue relates what happened to the fictional characters. The book concludes with a historical note that provides background information and black-and-white pictures from the period. For fans of this and the "American Girl" series (Pleasant Co.).
Cathy Coffman, Sunrise Mountain Library, Peoria, AZ
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this volume of the Dear America series, Gregory (Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie, 1997, etc.) describes the creation of the historic transcontinental railroad through the meeting of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads. Vital to western expansion, the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 authorized the competitive laying of track by the two companies, and travel was forever changed: a journey of six months by stagecoach, or five months by wagon train, took only six or seven days by railroad. Readers learn these facts and others painlessly, witnessing the construction of the railroad through the eyes of Libby West, a forthright 14-year-old whose father is a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News in the Utah Territory. He risks being tarred and feathered whenever he and other reporters write the unvarnished truth about the railroad's progress. On the homefront, women are the keepers of hearth and home, facing the hardships of all those who followed their dreams to the frontier. Numerous facts are interwoven, archival drawings and photos are included, and history is brought to life through Libby's candid narration. (b&w photos) (Fiction. 8-14) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 4^-8. An appropriately workmanlike telling of the building of the transcontinental railroad from the point of view of 14-year-old Libby, daughter of a "stringer," a reporter who follows the railroad, sending back stories. Libby's father buys a handpress to start his own paper in the tent cities that grew up along the building of the railroad. Libby's mother has insisted on the family's staying together, so she, Libby, and Libby's little brother leave Denver to travel with Libby's father. Although the press fails, and Libby's dad reverts to stringer status, Libby fills her diary with the sights and sounds of the busy (and dirty) tent cities, the new words she learns, and her wonderment at glimpses of Indians, Chinese, and Pete, the shy, young former Union soldier imprisoned with her father at Andersonville and now an inseparable companion. The language is not so lively as, for example, that in Sherry Garland's A Line in the Sand: The Alamo Diary (1998), but a lot of historical information finds its way into the tale, with the Dear America series' usual fine historical footnotes, illustrations, and background appended. GraceAnne A. DeCandido

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 059010991X
• ISBN 13: 9780590109918
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208