Yesterday I finished reading this book aloud to Karate Kid and Brown Bear Daughter. We always have a history-related read aloud book going, and this one occupied most of the past three weeks.

Swift Rivers was published in 1932, and it made the Newbery Honor roll in 1933, the same year that Elizabeth Lewis won the Newbery Medal for Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze. The very next year in 1934 Ms. Meigs won the Newbery Medal herself for her biography of Louisa May Alcott called Invincible Louisa. The year of publication is important because children, and adults, who are used to reading more recently published children’s literature will be challenged by the language and somewhat complicated plot line of Cornelia Meigs’s novel about the journey to manhood of a young man who brings a job to completion in spite of many obstacles.

Here’s an example of the language, chosen at random:

“Mr. Howland knew how to put shrewd provocative questions. In half a day’s acquaintance he seemed to have come to understand completely that restless Stuart Hale and his wish to ‘find things, or build something nobody ever thought of building before,’ and that impatience of his, not of study, but of authority over their students of professors whom he deemed no wiser than himself.”

The entire book reads much this same way. The language is somewhat stilted by today’s standards, rich in vocabulary, and very descriptive. Once while I was reading the book aloud, the author used the word “exceedingly.” Karate Kid interrupted, not rudely but just wanting to share with us, and said, “I really like that word ‘exceedingly.’ It sounds good.” I say any author who can make an All-Boy Eight Year Old Karate Kid listen and notice words–and follow the story at the same time, by the way–is a talented writer.

Swift Rivers is the story of eighteen year old Chris Dahlberg, a farm boy in northern Minnesota in the early 1800’s, who decides to make his fortune and take care of his elderly grandfather by running logs down the Mississippi River. Chris and his friend Stuart take the logs all the way to St. Louis and along the way they learn lessons in both forgiveness and persistence. Subplots reinforce the themes: the significance of good character, the necessity for hard work and determination, and the importance of forgiveness and friendship. All these qualities are show to be vital to true manhood and to survival in frontier America.

Karate Kid says he liked the part of the book where they were fighting over the fool’s gold and the part where Chris Dahlberg fought with the Indian. (Can you tell where Karate Kid got his nickname?) And Brown Bear daughter liked the part about the thieves because it was “kind of spooky” and the ending because everything turned out OK. Swift Rivers is a good read aloud book; I wouldn’t send most elementary age children off to read it by themselves. Middle schoolers who love history ought to be able to handle it, and high schoolers could learn a few things from this book about character as well as history.