Strange Stories of the Great River: The Adventures of a Boy Explorer

Grosvenor, Abbie Johnston, 1865-1948Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.6
Word count
241K words
Chapters
25

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature Nature ObservationAdventure JourneyCuriosityComing of AgeGrowing UpHeartwarming Narrative

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Strange Stories of the Great River: The Adventures of a Boy Explorer by GrosvenorAuthor: Grosvenor, Abbie Johnston, 1865-1948,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Feb 17, 2015

Editor's review

This is another entry in the Grosvenor Boys' Adventure Series, following a young protagonist who sets out as an explorer down a great river. The setting shifts from river valleys to waterways, with the plot unfolding around navigation, unfamiliar surroundings, and on-the-spot decisions. Compared with other books in the series, this one emphasizes the mobility the river brings: the forward route, sights along the way, and unexpected situations create the main tension. The prose is straightforward and the chapters are short, making it suitable for reading in segments and convenient as lightweight practice material for reading English originals. It offers a plain adventure reading experience—following the boy onward and encountering courage and resourcefulness through concrete events. As a public-domain e-book, it is easy to obtain and suits readers who want low-cost exposure to early boys' adventure literature. While reading, pay attention to the descriptions of the river and life along its banks; that is one of the more textured parts of the book.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Use the route as a thread for simple notes, recording the location and main events of each leg of the journey for easy review.
  2. Read one or two chapters a day, then summarize the plot in three sentences to combine comprehension and expression practice.
  3. Read alternately with The Adventures of the Great River Valley and compare how waterway and overland scenes differ in technique.
  4. Excerpt descriptions of life along the banks separately to build up expressions related to nature and navigation.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25

FAQ

I haven't read the other book in the series. Can I read this one directly? Yes. The two books share subject matter and style, but the stories are independent, and the characters and plot do not depend on the previous book. Starting directly with this book will not cause comprehension problems; if you later become interested in the author's style, you can then read the other one.
What reading level is this book roughly at? It is an intermediate-to-basic English original reader. Sentences are mainly simple and compound, the vocabulary consists mostly of everyday and nature-scene words, with occasional place names and navigation-related terms. Readers with basic grammar and a certain vocabulary can move through it smoothly; if there are many unfamiliar words, first clear up the key words in each chapter.
What should I pay attention to when reading it as a public-domain e-book? Public-domain e-books are easy to obtain, but layout and proofreading quality may vary by source. It is advisable to choose a version with clear layout and normal paragraphing; if you find obvious typos or disordered line breaks, you can compare another source to avoid affecting comprehension.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Grosvenor, Abbie Johnston, 1865-1948 Author · American · 1865–1948

Abbie Johnston Grosvenor (1865–1948) was an American author. Public information about her life and work is limited; her birth and death years and two representative works can be confirmed. She is known for adventure stories for young readers, including Strange Stories of the Great Valley: The Adventures of a Boy Pioneer and Strange Stories of the Great River: The Adventures of a Boy Explorer. Both books center on a boy protagonist and deal with pioneering and exploration along the great river and its valley, combining adventure with historical and geographical background suitable for young readers. Her writing emphasizes plot momentum and vivid scene-setting, and her surviving works show a sustained interest in the rivers and valleys of North America.