Title: The Trail Book
Author: Mary Austin
Date: 1918
Publisher: Gutenberg.org
Quote: “[A]bout a week after his father had been made night engineer and nobody had come into the Museum for several hours[,] Oliver had been sitting for some time in front of the Buffalo case, wondering what might be at the other end of the trail.”
I downloaded this book from Gutenberg.org. If you’re online, you can read, print, or download it too, paying only printing expenses. If you’re not, I’ll print a copy for you at cost.
So then, in this children’s fantasy story, Oliver and his sister find the stuffed buffalo and other artefacts in the Museum telling them all sorts of stories of prehistoric North America. They learn about mastodons, about Mound Builders, about women chiefs, and more. Austin’s research in North American prehistory had been extensive; I’m not altogether sure of all of her sources, but for a fantasy story collection this is an informed and informative book.
Some children love storybooks with unrestricted vocabularies. If you are reading to a child of that type, these fantasies are more wholesome than Alice in Wonderland is for pre-readers. They were intended for middle-grade readers, but know your child; some middle school students may think this type of fantasy is too “babyish” for their advanced age (ten or twelve). All I’ll say to that type of child is that this fifty-year-old aunt enjoyed the book.
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