Gold Fever by Verla Kay

Gold Fever Reviews

• 
  Diana

  Have you ever tried to find picture books that will tie in with a unit on chemistry? Well, I can tell you that it's no easy feat! We were studying the difference between gold and iron pyrite, and I figured that finding a book about fools's gold in the gold rush time couldn't be that hard. Right? Wrong! They're a lot tougher to find than I'd expected. As a result, this book was a disappointment, since it never mentioned fool's gold, but I don't hold it against the book, which was actually pretty decent. The fact that the poor guy left everything behind in hopes of riches and ended up crawling back empty-handed could lead to a very nice discussion on wealth and how much it's really worth. I do, rather, wish there had been more consequences to his choice, but it was still a nice little book, with good illustrations and a pleasant, lilting rhyme.
• 
  Brittney

  I thought this book was fun and engaging. When a farmer sees a group of men heading west to pan for gold in California, he realizes that he wants to join too. When he begins this journey, he quickly comes to find that it was more work than he anticipated. I really liked the message behind this book about realizing the importance of what you already have. Jasper learned that he shouldn't be greedy and came home to realize that he missed being a farmer. This historical fiction book teaches young children this important lesson, as well as teaching them about the history of the gold rush.
• 
  Danette

  9/21/17 Read with Simon
• 
  Dan Blackley

  Funny and fresh, Kay's use of language in her rhyming style has a story about the 49ers.
  
• 
  Kory Bootsma

  This story combines rhythmic rhymes, period specific vocabulary, and lush illustrations to show young children that the Gold Rush during the mad 1849 dash was filled with farmers leaving their preconceived "hard life" to strike it rich quickly in the lands of California. Yet these dreams were hardly achieved. Not only did the forty-niners have to travel through frontier lands, they also had to perform labor-intensive gold mining and were in stiff competition with each other. The farmer in this story realizes that the perception of the Gold Rush's "getting rich quick" was terribly misconstrued. Therefore he now returns back to his life of farming, now seen as the "easy life" as compared to the challenges of the Gold Rush.
  
  The illustrations contained within this book are very vibrant and striking and use the full amount of space within the pages, igniting the reader's full attention. Therefore young readers ages 3-8 would adore this historical story. Yet it does use some period-specific vocabulary such as "sleucing" in which young readers may not make the connection from the written word to its' visual counterpart. Yet the overall understanding of the story is not disturbed.
• 
  Samantha Peterson

  Jasper leaves his family and farm to pursue his dream of finding gold.