LeVar is inspired by the story to visit Old Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts, a hands-on living museum where he discovers what life was like in the early 1800's. He learns about training oxen, blacksmithing, bartering, and early printing methods.

Review books

Feature Book:

Ox-Cart Man

Follow the day-to-day life of an early 19th-Century New England family for a full year.

Author: Donald Hall
Illustrator: Barbara Cooney
Publisher: Penguin-Viking

Wagon Wheels

Shortly after the Civil War, a black family travels to Kansas to take advantage of the free land offered through the Homestead Act. During their first months on the prairie, they build a dugout house, live through a cold winter, are threatened by starvation, and saved by Osage Indians. When spring arrives, the father moves on, and the boys stay behind until their father finds a place to live and sends for them.

Author: Barbara Brenner
Illustrator: Don Bolognese
Publisher: Harper Collins

A Winter Place

A family carrying ice skates passes villages, farms, and forests on the way to a frozen lake high in the hills. Fifteen paintings accompany brief descriptive text.

Author: Yaffe Radin
Illustrator: Mattie Lou O'Kelley
Publisher: Little, Brown & Co.

Round Trip

Black and white illustrations and text record the sights on a day trip to the city and back home again to the country. Illustrations are optical illusions, drawn so different images can be seen when looking at the pictures from different directions.

Author: Ann Jonas
Illustrator: Ann Jonas
Publisher: William Morrow