“‘With a sinking feeling, I realized that I was entering a new kind of life, as rough and full of ups and downs as the road over which we traveled. Would I have the courage and fortitude to stick it out?”—Katherine Kirk, Bound for South Dakota.'”

  Pioneers (iOS; $2.99; Gr 4-6), Volume 24 of the award-winning Kids Discover series, written by Linda Scher, offers a detail-rich, fascinating introduction to the peak years of the Westward Expansion. The app is well organized with clear and simple navigation. Chapters topics advance logically, beginning with a broad definition of pioneer, followed by information on the various waves of people that headed West, their reasons for leaving home, the enormous hardships they faced on the trail, and the challenges of surviving in the often inhospitable environment they found themselves in. Community and leisure activities from cornhusking contests to hoedowns, and some commonly held misconceptions about the period and the people are also discussed. Briefly noted is the movement's disruption to the Native American way of life.

Interior image from Kids Discover's "Pioneers" (Scher) Art Resource

Throughout, drop-down quotes provide firsthand commentary by the travelers (not sourced). Adventurous individuals mentioned include frontiersman Daniel Boone, and Benjamin Singleton, who was born into slavery in Tennessee, and after the Civil War started an all-black community in Kansas. Interactive 3-D models; high definition video and audio; photographs, including many archival sepia prints; spot art cartoons; and animations add to the information and invite continued reading and browsing. The final chapters of Pioneers offer a few interactive games of limited interest, a simple quiz, and a bibliography with live links to excellent resources for further research.

Image from a video clip in Kids Discover's "Pioneers" (Scher) Peter Draper

The audio files combine music, speech, and sound effects to create an immersive experience. The full-screen 3-D animated models optimized for the iPad are particularly well executed. They include views of a log cabin and the inside of a covered wagon, and a twirl around a buffalo. One vivid video sequence titled “The Perils of the Plains” provides five short clips of the types of environmental challenges experienced by those living in that area, today and in the past: snowstorms, dust storms, prairie fires, tornadoes, and swarms of locusts. Also included are a few realistic-looking, distressed sepia video clips of moving wagon trains and figures walking. While it will be clear to adults that these are contemporary reenactments, students with no background knowledge of the period or the invention of film, may think they are seeing actual footage from the era. This informative app is could serve as an introduction to a unit of study on the Westward Expansion.Teachers may want to consider connecting their iPads to an interactive whiteboard and invite students to explore the app as a discussion starter or as a Know/Wants to Know/Learned (K-W-L) graphic organizer and opener to the period. It would also be suitable for students in a 1:1 environment, and interested children in a home or public library setting. Overall, it's an engaging introduction and an excellent addition to the series.—Elisabeth LeBris, Sears School LTC, Kenilworth, IL For additional app reviews, visit our dedicated app webpage.