Amy C. Rea

In the 1800s, Native American were kicked out of Southeast U.S. by the European immigrants. It was a devastating and tragic event for the Natives. Many of them died on the journey to a new place to call home. Therefore the setting effects the story because if it weren’t for the Europeans taking over, America wouldn’t have been what it is today. This book made the history of the wild west easier to understand by putting things in simpler words and the font didn't make me feel like I would be reading the book longer than I would've preferred.… (mehr)

Would you like to learn what it was like to deliver US mail by horses? While I often feel like I know a lot about United States history, there are some blind spots in my knowledge. For example, I know what the Pony Express was, and what its role in American History was, but how did it come to exist? Well, at the very least, that question is answered in Amy C. Rea's "The Pony Express (Wild West)." While the Pony Express are certainly a relic of US History, they are an interesting relic, where the desire for speedy communication across great distances ran up against technological limitations that could not be overcome yet. The mechanics of the Pony Express are fairly well explained and you do get a sense for the dangers and hardships theses riders went through on their route, at least broadly speaking. Maps and illustrations are helpful and designed to flesh out the explanatory parts of this informational picture book.
It is difficult however to trust the accuracy of all of the book's assertions. For one thing, it tends to speak as broadly as possible. While that is not necessarily a problem in and of itself, it suggests that the writer has very limited knowledge of the material she is writing about. This is compounded by side notes to relevant material about advertisements for Pony Express riders that bluntly says the writer is not certain if the ad in question was ever published. Since there is no bibliography section in this book, it is impossible to verify the writer's assertions.This point is particularly hilarious since there is a one page section designed to help learners and readers research the material by providing a properly cited source for a brief transcript from a primary source. This was meant to teach the reader to back up your narrative with facts and sources. It is a shame that the author did not apply that mindset to the entire book. Furthermore, this was made for a for profit press company called ABDO Publishing. By all indications, they are a company that specializes in publishing non-fiction books intended for distribution to libraries for educational purposes. As such, while I am certain that they do not intend to intentionally mislead their readers at all, they are producing a product. The product is designed to promote research on the topic of the book, not on the book itself. Hopefully it at least succeeds at that basic goal, since I believe that parts of obscure American history like this are worth remembering and discussing.… (mehr)