Help identifying a book

Cafe Society
#1

I’m pretty good at remembering all the books I read in all grades at school, but it just occurred to me that we read one in fifth grade that I don’t remember the title of.

It was about American pioneers, I think. The one incident that stands out in my memory is that they run out of coffee, and the mother gets a terrible headache without it. She tries to roast dandelion roots to make “coffee” with but it doesn’t help. Finally they come across someone who has some.

All I know about the book besides that is murky: it was the 1990-1991 school year, the teacher was a man and all the other books he chose had male protagonists (and I think the POV character in this story was the son).

Any ideas?

#2

I also remember a high school curriculum book about American pioneers, but I read it in the early 80s. Plus I am not American.

I can’t remember its name, though. I don’t think it had the words Oregon or Trail in the title, either.

#3

If you read it in school there is a chance that it was a Newbery winner. Any of these seem right?

#4

Darren Garrison, it was Across Five Aprils, a Newberry Award Winner from the 1970s. Thank you for the tip! I found the coffee incident discussed in online notes about the book.

It’s a Civil War story, not a pioneer story. No surprise, because my teacher that year was a big Civil War buff.

Guano Lad…I have no idea why you bothered to post. Maybe you were trying to be funny but it feels like you were making fun of me. This is the kind of thing that deters me from posting here except to get questions like this answered.

#5

I posted because I wanted to find the answer too, hoping that maybe the idea of it being a curriculum book across different countries made it easier to search on.

I’m not sure how on earth you could interpret my post in that way, but I’m sorry.