Yearly archive for 2014

An Armchair Tour of Utah

By on November 21, 2014   /   Book Lists  

Utah_border_signI am a devout armchair traveler. I love poring over maps and guidebooks and photo-rich coffee table books of places I will probably never be able to visit. I read histories and quick facts of places all over the world, and many of my favorite fiction titles are favorites because I fell in love with the setting.

Back in 2010, Sheela Chari wrote a post on our blog about reading and writing in Boston. I loved the post so much that I kept wishing others would post about their hometowns or favorite destinations as well. And then I realized I could share my own home state with kids who are armchair travelers, too. Join me as I take you on a tour of the great state of Utah through books (and a few websites, too).

UTAH HAS DINOSAURS

Have you ever seen dinosaur fossils still embedded in rock? You can in Utah! Several times I’ve stood before the “Dinosaur Wall” inside the Quarry Exhibit Hall at Dinosaur National Monument. It’s just inside Utah near the Colorado border. And you can find out more about the Dinosaur wall at the National Parks Service website.

But you can also read more about Utah’s dinosaurs in Dinosaurs of Utah: and Dino Destinations by Pat Bagley and Gayen Wharton or Dinosaurs of Utah by Frank Decourten.

Also check out the middle-grade picture book, Dinosaur Mountain: Digging Into the Jurassic Age, by Deborah Kogan Ray.

UTAH HAS RAILROADS

In Utah in 1869, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads joined together to create the first transcontinental railroad. You can read a fictional account of the journey in The Great Railroad Race: The Diary of Libby West by Kristiana Gregory. And check out more about it at the Golden Spike National Monument’s website.

 

 

UTAH HAS A SALTY LAKE

Did you know that the Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere? Did you also know that the only things that can live in the lake are some varieties of algae, and only brine shrimp and brine flies can tolerate the salty water enough to feed on the algae? I live close enough to the lake that sometimes I can smell the briny waters…which isn’t always the nicest smell in the world. But the stark beauty of the lake takes my breath away, especially at sunset when the colors light up the sky behind Antelope Island, the largest of the lake’s islands. Though geared for younger readers ages 6 and up, you can read more about this lake in The Great Salt Lake by Mary Schulte, or check out more on the web. (Oh, and yes, there really are wild bison on Antelope Island! I’ve seen them myself and they truly are amazing to watch.)

UTAH HAS NATURAL BEAUTY

Utah is home to five national parks, seven national monuments, two national recreation areas, and six national forests. It has some of the driest snow on earth, making some of the best powder for skiing at one of its fourteen ski resorts. From the western deserts to eastern mountains, from the northern forests to the Southern red hills, there is enough natural beauty in Utah to keep you busy for a lifetime. Read more about Utah in some of these fiction and nonfiction titles:

Utah (2nd title in the From Sea to Shining Sea series) by P.J. Neri

Utah: The Beehive State (Guide to American States series) by Janice Parker

Utah: The Beehive State (Blastoff Readers series) by Blake Hoena

Ghost Horses: A National Parks Mystery by Gloria Skurzynski and Alane Ferguson

The Maze by Will Hobbs

UTAH HAS PIONEERS AND NATIVE AMERICANS

Salt Lake City was founded by Mormon pioneers in 1847, and they settled much of the rest of the state, too. Some great historical fiction can take you back in time to the pioneer era of Utah. The most well-known and well-loved is The Great Brain series of books by John D. Fitzgerald. Also try Charlotte’s Rose by Utah native A.E. Cannon or All is Well by Kristin Embry Litchman.

Before the pioneers, however, Utah’s native population flourished. It was home to five Native American tribes. One, the Shoshone, is highlighted in the fictional novel, The Legend of Jimmy Spoon by Kristiana Gregory.

 

UTAH HAS INVENTORS AND OUTLAWS

Ever heard of a television? Well, it was invented by Philo Farnsworth, who was born right here in Utah. Read more about him and his invention in TV’s Forgotten Hero: The Story of Philo Farnsworth by Stephanie Sammartino McPherson.

Utah is also famous for its infamous outlaw, Butch Cassidy. Yep, he was born here, too. See the book Butch Cassidy by Carl R. Green and William R. Sandford for more about him.

UTAH HAS A WORLD WAR II INTERNMENT CAMP

During World War II the U.S. government relocated thousands of Japanese-Americans to internment camps. One of these camps, named Topaz, was located in Utah near the small town of Delta. Over 11,000 people were processed through this camp between 1942 and 1945, when the camp was dismantled. Not much is left of the site now except the barbed wire fence and the restored recreation hall, but visitors are welcome to tour the site and some of the buildings that were sold and relocated to nearby areas. Though not a proud moment in American history, I am grateful to the authors of the following books who have shared information about this internment camp and the effect it had on those who lived there: Journey to Topaz by Yoshika Uchida and Children of Topaz by Michael O. Tunnell.

Also see the historical fiction novel about two boys on both sides of the Topaz fence, Missing in Action by Dean Hughes.

UTAH HAS AUTHORS

If you keep a close eye on children’s literature, you may notice that there are a lot of Utah authors. And I mean A LOT. We also have more than our fair share of children’s and YA authors showing up on the NYT Bestsellers List. I’m not sure why that is—it must be something in the water here—but I’m proud of the many talented Utah writers I call my friends and neighbors.

Though there are many books by Utah natives I could highlight, I thought only one would be appropriate here: Palace Beautiful by Sarah DeFord Williams. The book is set in Salt Lake City and the author lives in Utah as well. It follows two timelines in history, so you can see Utah’s capitol city during the 1980’s and during the Flu Epidemic of 1918. This is a beautifully written book and a great place to end our armchair tour of Utah.

I hope you enjoy your visit to my homestate. And please leave a comment if you know of a middle-grade book about Utah or set in Utah that I may have missed. Happy armchair travel, everyone!

 

Elissa Cruz enjoys living between the mountains and a big, salty lake in Utah.  When she is not busy with her husband and five children, she is busy writing middle-grade fiction or helping other children’s authors in her capacity as ARA for the Utah/Southern Idaho region of SCBWI.

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Choose Your Own Adventure

By on November 19, 2014   /   Book Lists  

Hello Mixed-Up Filers!

Hope you’re all doing great! It’s been about two months since my last post and I can’t believe how much has happened since then. On this site for instance, we have had thirty-four different posts and added thirteen new members. I wish all of our newbies the very best of luck and hope they enjoy writing here as much as I do. Also, hope you all enjoyed the huge welcome-aboard gift-basket like the one they sent me when I joined. In all honesty, I’ve never seen anything so extravagant. Between the chocolates and roses and over $2500 in gift certificates to all of my favorite stores, I didn’t know where to turn first. But, I digress. Let me get back to the reason why I’m here and why they pay me the big bucks, and that’s for my posts.

As you all know, well, the three of you who read my posts anyway, I usually have trouble deciding what it is that I want to write about whenever my turn rolls around. I mean, those months sneak up on you pretty fast. Well, this time, I actually knew what I was going to write about and had it all planned out, but then something happened that changed all of my plans, when I saw in the news that R.A. Montgomery passed away this week. For those of you who don’t know R.A. Montgomery, he was one of the creators of the Choose Your Own Adventure series.

choose

Now, for those of you who don’t know, or who lived under a rock for the 80’s and 90’s, Choose Your Own Adventure is an interactive series of books which allowed you to determine the path of each story by making choices about what you wanted the main character to do.  An example is:

If you want to fly over the volcano, turn to page 83

If you want to emergency land into the lake, turn to page 116

I would dog-ear so many pages, trying to retrace my steps to go back and try the alternate path, that my book collection was called the kennel. I loved the series and anxiously looked forward to each new one that came out. I would run in to the bookstore, scour the shelves and grab each new one and beg my parents to buy them for me. I devoured them. I loved the aspect that each book was in a different setting or even a different time, but still had the familiarity of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, because each book starred ME! That was the hook for me. They came out and said YOU are the star, making it easier for me to place myself in the shoes of the main character. I could be in outer space, back in time, fighting pirates or battling ninjas, each book had a different and exciting hook to offer. During the course of its run, the series expanded to 230 books, selling and sold a total of 250 million copies worldwide.

journey under the sea

As I got older and moved around a lot, I lost some of them, but always had the fondness for the books. When I started to have kids of my own, I went out and got them all again and now have just about a complete collection. I went through them again, and the magic I felt as a kid, was still there. I am happy to say, my daughter now loves them just as much as I did. We also bought a Choose Your Own Adventure movie about the abominable snowman, where we could choose different paths for the characters on the DVD to take, which was a lot of fun.

choose movie

His death hit me because of the role that series had in my childhood.  Like everybody, I had a few books that always stayed with me and can bring me back to that time. That whole Choose Your Own Adventure series will do it for me. I have other books that I will name as my favorites, but as a series, there was nothing better to me than Choose Your Own Adventure. Even now, I’ll occasionally pick one up and start reading again and love hearing my daughter read. I’m transported back immediately to how I felt in that bookstore when I would see a new copy on the shelf.  And as for the rest of you, if you haven’t ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure book, what are you waiting for?mystery of the maya

R.I.P. R. A. Montgomery and thank you for so many fond memories through my childhood.

Now, you get to choose what you’d like to do!

If you would like to leave a comment, please scroll below.

If you’d like to leave without leaving a comment, then you have suffered a gruesome, horrifying fate and will have to start the story over.

maya screenshot

Until next time!

Jonathan

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The Power of Words

By on November 17, 2014   /   Book Lists  

So I was watching this video while working out at the gym the other day:

(Okay, I obviously wasn’t working out that hard, but hey, sometimes I just like to get on the elliptical and do some thinking between bursts of cardio…).

Anyway, watching all The Fault in Our Stars quotes stream by, I was reminded why I’ve always loved books so much. I mean, I’ve always been a sucker for a good story whatever the format, but books offer something more, something magical:

Words.

I know that seems sort of obvious. But all my fellow book lovers understand what I mean. There’s nothing quite like being immersed in a good book and coming across a turn of phrase so perfect it makes you stop in your tracks and catch your breath, just due to the sheer beauty of how the words come together. Sort of like taking a walk and being captivated by how the sunlight hits the leaves in the trees — a simple and fleeting reminder of how wonderful it is to think… To feel… To be alive and connected to the world.

When I was a tween and teen, I dog-eared countless books, marking words that spoke to me. Some quotes made it onto the covers of my notebooks or into the yearbooks of friends. Some just rattled around in my head, making me think. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been drawn to writing for this age group — words held such power for me back then, shaping me, helping me see things in new ways and understanding I wasn’t the only one who felt a certain way.

Of course, I still love words and continue to highlight phrases that speak to me — reading them over and over, rattling them around in my brain, making myself think. A couple of my recent favorites:

As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once. — John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

It’s as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way. — Jandy Nelson, The Sky is Everywhere 

(Huh, looking back at those I clearly have a thing for books that reference the sky in the title somehow…)

So how about you? What are some of your favorite quotes (or quotable authors or books)? What makes you stop, catch your breath, and read something again? Tell me in the comments below!

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