Holling C. Holling · 1951 · road

A Newbery Honor book from 1951, and one of the best geography lessons ever disguised as a story. Minn is a three-legged snapping turtle who hatches at the headwaters of the Mississippi and takes most of her life to reach the Gulf - and every margin of every page carries Holling's drawings of the glaciers, steamboats and history she is drifting past.

1. 1
   Lake Itasca

   A snapping turtle hatches by Little Elk Lake in Itasca State Park, where the Mississippi is a stream you can step across - and loses a leg almost at once, which is why she is Minn the three-legged turtle for the rest of the book.

2. 2
   Minneapolis

   Down past St Anthony Falls and the mills, and Holling's real method: the margins of every page carry pen drawings of glaciers, riverboats, dams and Sioux history while the turtle simply keeps going.

3. 3
   Wyalusing

   The Wisconsin bluffs where the river runs between limestone walls - and where Minn spends years, because a snapping turtle drifts and buries and waits, and the journey takes most of her life.

4. 4
   St Louis

   The Missouri comes in and the river doubles, and the book turns to steamboats, snag boats and the engineering of a waterway that will not stay where it is put.

5. 5
   Memphis

   The lower river, levees and cotton and the New Madrid country that once ran backwards in an earthquake - Holling teaching geology and history to children who think they are reading about a turtle.

6. 6
   Bayou Barataria

   South of New Orleans in Jean Lafitte's old country, where Minn is finally set free in the delta - two thousand miles from a stream in Minnesota she could have crossed in three steps.