A Special Series of Books for Children Who Struggle to Read

In the early 1830s, people in America began building the first locomotives and laying railroad tracks across the country. Mail, goods, and passengers all needed a way to traverse the nation, and the iron horse seemed the best way to do it. For the next forty years, the railroad slowly snaked westward to the edges of the frontier, then crossed great expanses of untamed wilderness to get to California, connecting East with West in a way that had not been possible before.

The work was not easy, nor was it without problems. Someone had to invent the first locomotive. Someone had to make it work well. Someone had to figure out how to keep passengers from being choked by smoke and burned by falling sparks from the locomotive’s smokestack. Someone had to recognize that the entire system of trains and tracks needed to be standardized so that a train in New York could travel on a track in Boston. Someone had to finance the building of more tracks, cut through prairies and forests, bore through mountains, build bridges over valleys and rivers. None of it was easy. In fact, much of it was dangerous.

The iron horses changed fundamentally how united the people of the United States actually felt, and it also radically revolutionized the economies of not just the many small cities along the railroad but also the country as a whole. But men had to make it work, and the books in this series tell those stories.

These books are printed in a special dyslexia-friendly font that makes them easier for some children with visual processing problems to read. A special feature of the books is that each two-page spread contains a QR code that links to audio of the book being narrated. Children can listen and follow along to help them learn the words that they are seeing.

The Men on Iron Horses Dyslexia Series offers a way for children with reading difficulties to enjoy reading and American history in a rare and wonderfully accessible combination that they will treasure for years to come.

Note: Although each title is meant to be a standalone book, important terms are defined or explained in the first book in which they appear, and the stories build upon one another, making the reading of the books in chronological order a more rewarding experience for children who are new to the topic.

This series is derived from a single novel of the same name. The novel is printed in a standard font with a typical formatting style and no audio feature. (See below.)