Swift Rivers

By Cornelia Meigs

Book Overview

Newbery Honor book

Barred from his family home-stead by his mean-spirited uncle, eighteen-year-old Chris weathers a Minnesota winter in a small cabin with his grandfather. Poverty and the tempting stories of a wandering Easterner convince Chris to harvest the trees on his grandfather's land and float the logs down the spring floodwaters of the Mississippi to the lumber mills in Saint Louis. Filled with stories of raft hands and river pilots, this fast-paced novel has all the momentum of the great Mississippi.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802777031
• ISBN13: 9780802777034
• Release Date: August 1970
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 0.0" x 0.1"
• Age Range: 10 to 15 years
• Grade Range: Grade 5 and higher

Customer Reviews

Riveting

This book is not only a fast paced adventure, but a picture of a simpler time. It is a glimpse into an era in which, despite its rougher nature, dishonesty and criminality were relatively rare--at least in the circles the main character lives/travels in. I also found it refreshing the things (small and large) those in that time would do for someone else without expecting anything in return.The book has picturesque language, fast-paced adventure and interesting characters. It also has a certain amount of sentimentality.I read it with my 10-year-old son as part of the Sonlight Curriculum. It was used as a read aloud, not a reader. I concur with another reviewer that more would be gained from a child several years older than by a 9 year old, if read independently.My son enjoyed it and got some things out of it, and I got even more out of it. Although it is technically a "children's book", it could also be read by, and hold the interest of, an adult.

I absolutely loved this most interesting wonderful book!

You'll have to read it!