Books in Her Frontiers of America series

Steamboats to America is a volume in the Frontiers of America series, a set of books dedicated to providing informative, historical introductory books for children. This particular book focuses on the invention and progress of the steamboats in the early eighteen hundreds. It begins by relating the hardships of keelboat navigation as experienced by Captains Lewis and Clark, and outlines several other adventures along the journey of the newly invented steamboat, culminating with the reasons for why railroads replaced steamboats as the main tool of expansion. Each chapter focuses on a particular character - explorer, inventor, passenger, you name it - and their experiences while on board a steamboat. Thus, the history is related in an engaging fictional format. The prose is not rich - indeed, it is quite simple - but is very clean.

These are true stories of real people. Davey Crockett going down the Ohio on a flatboat has a fight with a "ring-tailed roarer." Mike Fink gets six sheep for his keelboat crew by outwitting a farmer. Jim Garfield falls off his canal boat about a week before a fight leads him to think he should go on to better things. wilderness waterways drama Sam Clemens pilots a Mississippi steamer and the pilot of the Robert E. Lee outwits the pilot of the Natchez to win a historic race.