What Was the Donner Party? (What Was?)

by Ben Hubbard (Author) Tim Foley (Illustrator)

Reading Level: 4^th − 5^th Grade

Series: What Was?

Learn about the treacherous journey across the Sierra Nevada mountain range that isolated and trapped a group of pioneers heading to California for an entire winter in this latest addition to the New York Times Bestselling What Was? series.

In the winter of 1846-47, a group of eighty-seven pioneers heading from the Midwest to California found themselves snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range with no way forward and no food or supplies. While forty-eight of the group members survived, the others perished due to extreme weather, starvation, and illness. To survive, the remaining people resorted to extreme measures...including cannibalism. Learn about the many miscalculations, bad decisions, and extreme weather that led to the demise of nearly half of the Donner Party in this book for young readers about one of California's first major disasters.

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Ben Hubbard

Ben Hubbard is an accomplished nonfiction author for children and adults with over 130 titles to his name. He has written about many subjects, from space, the samurai, and sharks to poison, pets, and the Plantagenets. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages and can be found in libraries around the world.

Indonesian born Dede Putra is a digital artist living in Auckland, New Zealand. He is a "bit of a foodie" and a "big audio/visual guy."

Classification

Non-fiction

ISBN-13

9780593520741

Lexile Measure

900

Guided Reading Level

Publisher

Penguin Workshop

Publication date

November 07, 2023

Series

What Was?

BISAC categories

Library of Congress categories

History
19th century
California
Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.)
Overland journeys to the Pacific
West (U.S.)
Pioneers
Donner Party

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