"This is a fabulous book for use in the classroom. I downloaded it to my laptop and then projected it on the screen at the front of the room. The kids enjoyed the pictures, of course, and in this format the text can easily be used for the gamut of Whole Group reading activities such as Modeled reading and Shared reading. The Oregon Trail is a fascinating unit for elementary and middle school study, and Ollie's Great Adventure makes a great anchor text. Here are a few of the uses for which I have found it to be well-suited:

• It provides opportunities to build vocabulary, background, and content-area knowledge.
• It exposes students to a genre that most (of mine, anyway) are unfamiliar with.
• The text is easily scaffolded for struggling readers.
• It allows me to model fluent and phrased oral reading.

I recommend the book as a basis for any elementary and early middle school unit on the Oregon Trail.