A Family Apart (Orphan Train Adventures) - Softcover

Nixon, Joan Lowery

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440226767 ISBN 13: 9780440226765

Publisher: Laurel Leaf, 1995

Synopsis

The middle-grade answer to Christina Baker Kline's New York Times bestselling Orphan Train, this is a shockingly timely historical adventure.
 
Imagine being taken from your home. Imagine your mother is the one who lets it happen.
 
This is the fate that befalls the Kelly children. It’s 1856, and their widowed mother has sent them west from New York City because she’s convinced that she can’t give them the life they deserve.
 
The Kellys board an “orphan train” and are taken to St. Joseph, Missouri, where their problems only grow worse. It was bad enough that they had to say goodbye to their mother, but now they’re forced to part ways with their fellow siblings as well. Thirteen-year-old Frances won’t stand for it. She’s going to protect her brothers and sisters, even if it means dressing up like a boy and putting herself in danger.
 
Will Frances be able to save her siblings? And what about her mom—was splitting up their family really her greatest act of love? Ride the rails with Frances and her siblings to find out!
 
“This is as close to a perfect book as you’ll buy this year.” –VOYA

About this title

About the Author:

Joan Lowery Nixon was the author of more than 130 books for young readers and was the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Best Young Adult Mystery Award. She received the award for The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance, The Name of the Game Was Murder, and The Other Side of the Dark, which also won the California Young Reader Medal. Her historical fiction included the award-winning series The Orphan Train Adventures, Orphan Train Children, and Colonial Williamsburg: Young Americans.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 5-8 First of a projected quartet of orphan stories, each about a member of the same family of children transported by orphan train from New York to St. Joseph, Missouri, and surrounding areas. A kind of period piece, circa 1860, A Family Apart has a distinct Horatio Alger tone. Well constructed incidents, including the widowed mother giving up her children so they can be sent west to find a better life, a grass fire set by sparks from the train, and a holdup of the train contribute to fast action and considerable suspenseparticularly about the oldest girl, Frances, who disguises herself as a boy so she can better help her brothers and sisters. An Orphan for Nebraska (Atheneum, 1979) by Charlene Joy Talbot is a similar orphan train story, but about one boy. Patricia Beatty's That's One Ornery Orphan (Morrow, 1980) is more humorous but less of a saga. What happened to orphans and street children of the last century may well appeal to many of today's children who hear so much about street children and abducted and deserted kids. George Gleason, Department of English, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Laurel Leaf
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0440226767
• ISBN 13: 9780440226765
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176