A PICTURE BOOK OF LEWIS AND CLARK

Adler (A Picture Book of Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 378, etc.) marks the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition with this informative biography for young readers. He traces the two-year journey from beginning to end and brings the narrative to life with excerpts from letters and journal entries. Occasionally, Adler interjects, placing events in context and pointing out their significance. For example, he writes that when the “Corps of Discovery” reached the Pacific Ocean in the winter of 1805, they took a vote to decide where to set up camp. “Among those who voted,” he explains, “were Clark’s slave, York, and Sacagawea, long before blacks and women voted in United States elections.” His explanation surrounding the circumstances of Lewis’s death, three years after journey’s end, allows room for interpretation. Backmatter contains an author’s note, time line, bibliography, and suggested Web sites. The opening map, unfortunately, creates confusion in an otherwise exemplary effort. All land east of the Mississippi is labeled “United States,” individual states are not identified, and North America’s entire eastern border is obscured. The land west of the river to the Rocky Mountains is ringed in purple, but not labeled as the former Louisiana Territory. In addition, 12 states are marked, not the 15 that eventually occupied the land. An explanation is provided later (“When the mission was planned, the land just west of the Mississippi River belonged to France. By the time it began, it belonged to the United States”), but it does little to bring the fuzzy geography into focus. (Picture book/nonfiction. 4-8)