AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN REACH

Woolly mammoths, giant sloths, a race of tiny cannibals, erupting volcanoes, a salt mountain—did these things really exist in the unexplored northwest? Lewis and Clark would find out on their famous journey from 1803–06. President Jefferson had just doubled the size of the US with the Louisiana Purchase—800,000 acres at three cents an acre. Now Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were assigned to find and map a Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. They were to make friends with the Indians, encourage peace among the various tribes, keep journals about the plants, animals, and landscape, collect samples of plants and animals, and establish an American presence that would further American trade. With strokes of luck along the way—the help of young Sacagawea, the decision of the Nez Perce to help them rather than kill them—the party did make it to the Pacific, though they did not find a Northwest Passage. They found hundreds of new plant and animal species, made contact with several Indian tribes, and established an American presence in the area to counter the British presence. Thanks to the journals, we can see through the eyes of Lewis and Clark and behold the wonders of a courageous odyssey through a pristine wilderness. Kimmel’s (In the Eye of the Storm, not reviewed, etc.) work is a well written, lively account for young readers. Each chapter opens with an excerpt from the journals, and maps, illustrations, and excerpts from the journals are sprinkled throughout. The return trip is given cursory treatment, but this is a fine introduction for young readers and a solid addition to the growing number of new books about Lewis and Clark, such as Laurie Myers’s Lewis and Clark and Me (p. 886) and Laurence Pringle’s Dog of Discovery (not reviewed). (index and bibliography, not seen) (Nonfiction. 8-12)