Book summary

As a school project all fifth grade students must participate in the "Wagons Out West" program in which they pretend to be settlers traveling from Missouri to Oregon, via wagon train, in 1846. The project itself doesn't sound all that bad to Dinah, the tallest girl in the class, but she's unhappy about the fact that she has to "marry" one of her fellow students--she's paired, against her will, with the shortest boy in the class--and travel in a wagon train that includes not only the snobbiest girl in the class but also the meanest boy. As the students "travel" out West, they encounter, via history lessons and storytelling, all the problems that wagon train travelers would have had in the 1800s. Will Dinah and her team make it to Oregon?

Media reviews

"Gilson has a keen eye for pedagogical absurdities and for those interpersonal frictions that tend to combust into adolescent trauma."