Books in American Adventure series

Voices for Freedom contains three stories focusing on the Underground Railroad and the 1963 Freedom March on Washington. Stories are Friend on Freedom River, Riding to Washington, and The Listeners.In Friend on Freedom River, written by Gloria Whelan, runaway slaves ask Louis to ferry them across the Detroit River to freedom in Canada. He’s not sure what to do. If they are caught, it means prison for Louis. Written by Gwenyth Swain, Riding to Washington tells of one girl’s journey to attend the 1963 “Great March on Washington.” Janie and her father ride a bus to Washington, D.C. to hear a man named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak. During the trip, Janie sees firsthand the injustices that many others endure. In The Listeners, another offering from Gloria Whelan, each night Ella May and her friends secretly listen outside the windows of their master’s house. They listen to learn their fates and those of the other slaves.

Each paperback in this series features a trio of fictional stories highlighting a moment in American history. Troubled Times contains three stories focusing on the Great Depression. In The Lucky Star a girl helps her sister and other children learn to read when their school is closed. Rudy Rides the Rails features a boy living the hobo life. In Junk Man's Daughter, a family struggles after moving to the United States.

Westward Journeys contains three stories focusing on the American westward expansion, including the Oregon Trail and the Oklahoma Land Run. In Minnow and Rose, Rose and her family are traveling with a wagon train heading west on the Oregon Trail. When she encounters Minnow, a young native girl, their meeting has life-changing results for both cultures. The Oklahoma Land Run is the topic in Pappy's Handkerchief. When Moses and his family hear of free farmland out in Oklahoma, they head west to fulfill a lifelong dream of owning their own land. After a difficult wagon trip, they arrive at the staging point for the Oklahoma Land Run. In A Book for Black-Eyed Susan, Cora's family is faced with tragedy during their journey on the Oregon Trail. When Cora learns she is to be separated from her baby sister, she creates a memento of their journey together.

The Fur Trappers of the Old West were fearless, daring men. They knew the West when it was a wilderness - a land of Indians and sudden death. Following the countless beaver streams these bold, buckskin-clad men explored the wilderness until it held no secrets from them. This is more than a story of the fur trade and the adventures shared by the trappers. It is also a story of the trails they blazed for the settlers of a young, growing America.

Thomas Bowden hates the Tories, the colonists who have sided with the English during the Revolutionary War. He especially hates their Native American allies who tortured and killed many of his neighbors in a terrible massacre.still, he and his mother, sister, and baby brother have reached the safety of Philadelphia-but not for long. When Thomas recognizes a Tory spy, he is kidnapped, made to join a wagon train bringing arms and supplies to the enemy, and then turned over to a group of Mohawk fighters.Thomas fears the worst. Instead, over a winter spent in the Mohawk village, he discovers that truth in his wartime world is far more complicated than he ever imagined.Thomas is back, in an exciting and thought-provoking American Adventure!

When Luke Reed left his prairie home to accompany Uncle Eli to Boston, he passed hordes of fortune seekers heading west to join the Gold Rush. It seems there's money to be made out there, and Uncle Eli doesn't want to miss out on any of it. In this new adventure, the duo is off again, this time making the perilous voyage by clipper ship to the goldfields of California.Luke and his friend Toby wonder how they'll keep themselves occupied on the long voyage, but not for long. Besides the everyday risks of stormy weather and shark-infested waters, they face a whole set of unexpected challenges, including a cabin boy with a mysterious secret and a pirate ship that they just can't seem to outrun.Full of action and gripping suspense, this American Adventure will have readers turning the pages to find out how Luke braves the turbulent seas.