South Dakota: A Journey Through Time  was written for students with a reading level of 4.5 to 6.5. Several guidelines were followed to write materials for this reading level.

• Sentence length is short.

• The typeface is large.

• Simple words are used.

• Each chapter includes several photographs.

• Subheaders divide the material into smaller chunks of information.

• New vocabulary words are easy to locate in bold print.