Mary Ellen's first-person narration is innocent, fresh and heartfelt (``Never, I thought, had I seen a world so large,'' she says of the plains of Nebraska), and capable of conveying darker feelings as well. En route to a ``beautiful land of promise,'' nine-year-old Mary Ellen, her two sisters and her father and stepmother find themselves beset by all manner of dramas, from the dog being allowed an unprecedented ride in the wagon when his paws are sore to a near-fatal brush with cholera and an attack by Indians. Basing her story on the published accounts of her true-life heroine, Mary Ellen Todd, Van Leeuwen (Going West the Oliver and Amanda Pig series) describes a family's tumultuous journey along the Oregon Trail in 1852.
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