The Great Gold Rush Adventure
by Kyle Griffith
Girl Friday Productions
Bird Upstairs Books
Children's Fiction
Pub Date 07 Sep 2021


I am reviewing a copy of the Great Gold Rush Adventure through Girl Friday Productions/Bird Upstairs Books and Netgalley:


This easy to read beautifully illustrated adventure will take the reader on an adventure that they aren’t likely to forget. You will be transported back to 1897 Gold Rush Era, Seattle which at the time is bustling with fortune seekers headed to the goldfields!



While Walter an errand boy chases an adventurous pup named Dusty onto a steamship bound for the Klondike, he also meets Hal, an old prospector. Soon the trio teams up on a Great adventure from Seattle’s Miners Landing to the icy shores of Alaska to the Golden Horseshoe Saloon to a frozen landscape with promises of riches underground—risking life and limb for a chance at making their fortune. Every miner dreams of gold, but will Walter, Dusty, and Hal be the ones to strike it rich?



Not only does The Great Gold Adventure tell the fictional tale of the trio, but it is tells the historic facts telling the reader how in 1897 hen a ship bearing two tons of gold from the Klondike docked alongside the site of Pier 57 in 1897, it triggered a gold rush that thrilled the world and led to Seattle’s establishment as a world-class city. The historical Minders Landing site, located on Seattle’s waterfront, where almost 7 million tourists visit each year, is just steps from the Seattle Aquarium and the Pike Place Market. It is home to one of Seattle’s most beloved tourist destinations, the Seattle Great Wheel, which 1 million visitors ride each year.



If you’re a child looking for an adventurous read or simply a child at Heart, I highly recommend The Great Gold Rush Adventure.


Five out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

My children and I enjoyed reading The Great Gold Rush Adventure together a couple of days ago, and I was pleased that evening when they described the story to the older children at the dinner table. You know a book is memorable when they talk about it later! Something that made this book even more interesting than it already was is that we read a book a year or two ago about the same gold rush, and they were remembering things that were in that book, and also this one.
A dog stole Walter's lunch box one day, and in chasing him down, Walter inadvertantly ended up on board the steamship Portland, bound for the Yukon gold fields. A miner took the boy in hand, and they made their way to the Klondike. Along the way, they had to beware of pickpockets and scammers—and would they make a fortune when they reached their goal, or be like so many others who lost everything?
The pictures in this book are wonderful! They are full-color, realistic paintings, with so much detail in them that you could spend a lot of time studying them. In fact, after we read the story, we went back through and looked at the pictures for a second time. One picture of the Portland has a couple of cutaway sections, so we can see inside the hold. It shows the provisions and the engine room. The historical notes at the end of the book made us quite curious about some of the pictures, and we had fun looking for the details that were mentioned. In fact, those historical notes are very good—they fill in the gaps and tell the rest of the story that can't be fit into the picture book story.
The Great Gold Rush Adventure is a beautiful book that I would love to have on our shelf. I know my 2-year-old would claim it as her own and read it over and over, since it has a dog pictured on almost every page! It is one that the older children would sit and study whenever it was left laying around, too.
I received a review copy of this book from NetGalley, and these are my honest thoughts about it.

My review will also appear on www.ignitelit.com in February 2022.