Literature List

RIVERS - STREAMS LITERATURE

Atwell, Debby. River. Houghton Mifflin. 1999. Life in early America grows and people begin to settle along the banks of the river. Overuse and misuse of the river lead to pollution. The people remembered how it had been and they begin to change things.

Baker, Susan. First Look at Rivers. Gareth Stevens. 1991. Explains how rivers begin, travel, and end, and how they benefit humankind.

Cherry, Lynne. A River Ran Wild. Scholastic. 1992. Depicts how the Nashua River was affected by the textile mill and how it was saved by the people.

Dabcovich, Lydia.Follow the River.Sundance Big Books.

Dorros, Arthur. Follow the Water from Brook to Ocean. Let's Read-and-Find-Out Science Series. HarperCollins Publishers. 1991. Water flows from a brook to a stream to a river to the ocean. Shows how water shapes the earth and why it is important to keep our water clean.

Dramer, Kim. The Mekong River. Franklin Watts, A Division of Grolier Publishing. 2001. The Mekong River touches six countries - China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. This book follows the path of the Mekong, and explores its history, geographic features, and environment. There are other books in the Watts Library: The Colorado River by Carol B. Rawlins; The Hudson River by Melissa Whitcraft; The Niagara River by Melissa Whitcraft; The Orinoco River by Carol B. Rawlins; The Seine River by Carol B. Rawlins; The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers by Melissa Whitcraft; and The Yellow River by Kim Dramer.

Flack, Marjorie. The Story About Ping. Reprinted many times. Story takes place on the Yangtze River.

Fowler, Allan. All Along the River. Children's Press. 1994. This is part of the Rookie Read-About-Science Series. Shows different parts of the river.

Fowler, Allan. Living Near a River. Children's Press. 2000. This is part of the Rookie Read-About-Science Series.

Geisert, Bonnie. River Town. Houghton. 1999. Shows the different seasons in a small town.

Geography: Rivers Curriculum Guide. Dale Seymour Publications. 1997. The guide provides lessons that can be used with a study on rivers.

George, Jean Craighead. To Climb a Waterfall. Philomel Books. 1995. A boy follows the stream to get to the waterfall.

Gibbons, Gail. The Great St. Lawrence Seaway. Morrow Junior Books. 1992. What do you do when you can't go from the source to the mouth of a river? The St. Lawrence Seaway was constructed to get goods from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.

Gilliland, Judith Heide. Illustrated by joyce powzyk. River. Clarion Books. 1993. The author describes the Amazon River and the life it supports in its rain forests.

Gilliland, Judith Heide. Steamboat! The Story of Captain Blanche Leathers. Dorling Kindersley Publishing, Inc. 2000. Biography tells the true story of a girl whose courage and determination help her to become the country's first female steamboat captain. The story takes place on the Mississippi River.

Harness, Cheryl. Mark Twain and the Queens of the Mississippi. Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division. 1998. The author creates portraits of the Mississippi River and the great man it inspired.

Haslam, andrew. Make it Works! Rivers. World book/Two-Can. 1996. This book gives precise explanatory text and information. also included in the book are re-creations of physical landscapes and instructions for experiments and model-making projects.

Hiscock, Bruce. The Big Rivers: The Missouri, the Mississippi and the Ohio. Atheneum Book for Young Readers. 1997. Describes the 1993 flood through Science, history, and geography.

Holling, Holling Clancy. Minn of the Mississippi. Houghton Mifflin. 1991. Fictionalized account of the journey of a snapping turtle from the Mississippi's source to the mouth.

Holling, Holling Clancy. Paddle-to-the-Sea. Houghton Mifflin. 1941. An Indian boy takes a journey from Lake Superior to the Atlantic Ocean in a small canoe.

Hooper, Meredith. River Story. Candlewick Press. 2000. Depicts the river from its source to its mouth.

Jeunessse, Gallimard. The River. Scholastic. 1992. A First Discovery Book. Book depicts plant and animal life near the river. The use of see-through plastic pages that change the pictures provides the magic of discovery.

Kellogg, Steven. Mike Fink. Scholastic, Inc. 1992. Tall tale of keelboatman who travels the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio Rivers in the days before the American Civil War.

Leacock, Elspeth and Susan Buckley. Illustrated by rodica Prato. Journeys in Time: A New Atlas of american history. Houghton Mifflin co. 2001. Journeys in Time is a book on "story" maps of 20 journeys that have shaped our nation's past. the authors provide the reader with visual and verbal facts. Readers will see how rivers helped travelers find new worlds.

LeMarche, Jim. The Raft. Harper Collins Publishers. 2000. Nick isn't happy about spending the summer with his grandmother. A raft appears and that changes everything as he begins to explore the river and woods around him.

Llamas Ruiz, Andres. Rivers.Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 1996. Depicts how a river at the source and takes the reader through the different stages until it reaches the mouth.

Locker, Thomas. Where the River Begins. Dial Books. 1984. Two boys and their grandfather go on a camping trip to find the source of the river.

Lourie, Peter. Hudson River, An Adventure from the Mountains to the Sea. Caroline House. Author describes the Hudson River from its mountain brook in the Adirondack Mountains to its mouth at the southern tip of Manhattan, where it meets the Atlantic.1992.

Magdanz, James. Go Home, River. Alaska Northwest Books. 1996. Book relates to the water cycle and native peoples of Alaska. A family sails on the river to its delta and continues along the Arctic coast and an unexpected reunion with the river.

McCloskey. Rovert. Make Way for Ducklings. Puffin Books. 1941. Part of this classic story takes place in the Charles river in Boston.

Michel, Francois. Illustrated by Yves Larvor. Water. English text by Lothrop, Lee & shepard Books. 1993. This is a pop-up, pull-tab, lift-the-flap guide to the most valuable natural resource, water.

Michael, Pamela, ed. The Gift of Rivers - True Stories of Life on the Water. Travelers' Tales. 1999. Anecdotes of worldwide river travel.

Miegs, Cornelia. Swift Rivers. Walker and Company. 1994. Ten-year old Chris harvests trees on his grandfather's land and floats the logs down the Mississippi to St. Louis. 1933 Newbery Honor Book.

O'Dell, Scott. Streams to the River, River to the Sea. Fawcett Juniper. 1988. Historical fiction of the life and explorations of Sacagawea.

Peet, Bill. Farewell to Shady Glade. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1966. A group of animals live in a quiet glade of sycamore, willows, and cottonwoods along the banks of a winding creek. Their lives are interrupted by a rumbling sound. They have to relocate and finally find a place that suits them. The message of preserving what is left of our natural world comes through.

Pirotta, Saviour.Rivers in the Rain Forest. Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers. 1999. The author describes aspects of rivers in the rain forest. Topics include river plants and animals, the water cycle, floods, river roads, mining, and saving the rivers.

Pollard, Michael. The Ganges. Benchmark Books. 1997. Traces the course of the river in India. Describes its physical features, history, and importance.

Pollard, Michael. The Nile. Benchmark Books. 2000. Describes how the river was formed. Includes the history of the areas along the river, including annual flooding, Aswan High Dam, and the cities on the Nile.

Pollard, Michael. The Yangtze. Benchmark Books. 1998. Discusses habitats around the Yangtze and Ganges Rivers. Also describes how they were formed.

Price, Olive M. Three Golden Rivers. 1999. An orphaned family of four children, ages 8 to 16, try to live on their own by finding a home and jobs in Pittsburgh in 1850. Because of the rivers, commerce of the riverboats, glass making, and steel mills become evident.

Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert. Penguin Books. 1993. This history of the use and misuse of water resources in the west (U.S.).

Sanders, Scott Russell. The Floating House. Simon and Schuster. 1995. A pioneer family in 1815 sail their flatboat from Pittsburgh to settle in Indiana.

Say, Allen. A River Dream. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1988. A young boy opens a box of fishing flies when he is sick in bed. This is the beginning of a fantasy fishing trip.

Siebert, Diane. Illustrated by Greg harlin. Mississippi. HarperCollinsPublishers. 2001. Author describes the Mississippi in poetic form. Together with the illustrator, they "paint" a portrait of the river.

Spier, Peter. The Erie Canal. Doubleday. 1970. (Note: Peter Spier is the illustrator.) Book is illustrated to the words of the familiar song. It describes the waterway from Albany to Buffalo that connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. Use with The Great St. Lawrence Seaway by Gail Gibbons.

Stein, R. Conrad. The Story of Mississippi Steamboats. Regensteiner Publishing Enterprises, Inc. 1987. A brief history of the steamboats that plied the Mississippi River during the early 1800s is depicted in this story.

Sturges, Philemon. Bridges Are to Cross. Puffin Books. 1998. Different types of bridges, examples, and locations are discussed.

Taylor, Barbara. River Life. DK Publishing. 1998. Depicts the flora and fauna living in and near the rivers. Use of text and photographs.

The Unfolding River. Quarto Publishing. 1992. (May be out-of-print) The pages of the book unfolds from the source to the mouth of the river. Each page is filled with information: how v alleys are shaped, the river's stages, drainage networks, the floodplain, sediments and braided streams, and rivers and lakes.

Yolen, Jane. Letting Swift River Go. Little, Brown, and Company. 1992. Story takes place in the middle of the 20th century. The Swift River towns in Massachusetts were drowned in order to form the Quabbin Reservoir. This is a story that captures the changing landscape.

© Hawaii Geographic Alliance. All rights reserved. August, 2001.