Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story

Warren, Andrea. Orphan Train Rider:  One Boy's True Story. 1996. 80pp. Lexile 960.

In this and other books, Warren brings history to life through interviews with people who lived through important times and events.  Readers hear directly from Lee Nailling, who rode an orphan train to Texas in 1926 along with his two brothers.  He was one of more than 200,000 children sent from the East Coast between 1859 to 1929 to be taken in by Midwestern families.  Many of the children, who didn’t know if they’d be treated as family members or as servants, had parents who couldn’t afford to care for them. Nailling’s memories describe the journey and the agony of being sent to different homes from his brothers.  Warren balances his personal saga with a general history of the orphan trains. Although the ending for Nailling was relatively happy, readers will sympathize with the plights and fears of the orphans.  Well-chosen details, apt quotations, and black-and-white photographs add to the engaging narrative.

Fiction Tie-in:  Although Karen Cushman is best known for Catherine Called Birdy and The Midwife's Apprentice, she created a memorable protagonist who rides an orphan train in Rodzina.  Rodzina is a twelve-year-old Polish-American orphan sent West in 1881 on an orphan train from Chicago.  She's a large, angry, kind girl who's scared of what could happen but fiercely determined to make her life better.  A great read that incorporates a lot of history, including the orphan trains, immigration, and limited choices for females at that time.

The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton

Wooldridge, Connie Nordhielm. The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton. 2010. 184pp. Lexile 1030.

This elegant biography of author Edith Wharton contends that through her writing she “bravely escaped” her background of wealth, social prestige, and restrictions on females.  Wharton was born into the Jones family that’s the basis of the phrase, “Keeping up with the Joneses.”  Her early life, detailed here, moved among upper class Manhattan, the summer “cottages” of Newport, and years in Europe, some of which provided the settings for her novels.  Despite her mother’s fear that her daughter was too intellectual and strong-willed to get a good husband, Wharton persisted in reading and writing, at first secretly and then publishing her work.  Numerous quotations plus black-and-white photographs convey Wharton’s personality and milieu.  In addition to notes and bibliography, the back matter includes lists of Wharton's works and their film and television adaptations.

Reading Std #1: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and implicitly, citing specific textual evidence to support conclusions drawn from it.  Have students locate facts, details, quotations, and incidents in Wharton’s life that supports the central idea conveyed by the book’s title.  They should find explicit as well as implicit evidence.