Tricia, a teacher educator at the University of Richmond, has a blog post that may interest you. Stately Knowledge lists a number of books about ALL the states, including one about a 50-car train followed by a caboose representing Washington, D.C. In her post Tricia links to another blog:
Mrs. McGowan's 50 States Book List has children's books for the states, but be aware the list includes authors FROM the states as well as books ABOUT the states. Mrs. McGowan links to another blog:
Carol Hurst's The State We're In lists state books for older children. She lists only one book per state, but because I've read some of these books and other books by some of the authors, this looks like an excellent list. I see no reason not to include books from this list in your reading around the states, since basically the protagonists of the books are simply a bit younger than in books for adults. The decision, of course, is all yours.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Texas
R-Lo said, "Actually, one suggestion I have for Texas that I think is really great is John Phillip Santos' National Book Award finalist, Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation. A review of this can be found on my blog."
Part treasury of the elders, part elegy, part personal odyssey, part Book of the Dead, Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation is an immigration tale and a haunting family story. John Phillip Santos brings to life a pageant of unforgettable family figures: from Madrina -- touched with epilepsy and prophecy ever since, as a girl, she saw a dying soul leave its body -- to Teofilo, who was kidnapped as an infant and raised by the Kikapu Indians of northern Mexico. And he searches for answers to the mystery surrounding his grandfather's suicide in San Antonio in 1939. Combining lyrical prose, magic realism, and haunting confession into an unforgettable voice, Santos weaves together Mexican mythology and the history of Texas to create the story of how the soul of one Mexican family was passed down, and sometimes nearly lost, across borders and decades, into the present.
Part treasury of the elders, part elegy, part personal odyssey, part Book of the Dead, Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation is an immigration tale and a haunting family story. John Phillip Santos brings to life a pageant of unforgettable family figures: from Madrina -- touched with epilepsy and prophecy ever since, as a girl, she saw a dying soul leave its body -- to Teofilo, who was kidnapped as an infant and raised by the Kikapu Indians of northern Mexico. And he searches for answers to the mystery surrounding his grandfather's suicide in San Antonio in 1939. Combining lyrical prose, magic realism, and haunting confession into an unforgettable voice, Santos weaves together Mexican mythology and the history of Texas to create the story of how the soul of one Mexican family was passed down, and sometimes nearly lost, across borders and decades, into the present.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Wyoming
Sharon said, "I just finished Open Season by C.J. box. It was set in Wyoming. Here's my review."
"When a high-powered bullet hits living flesh, it makes a distinctive -pow-WHOP- sound that is unmistakable even at tremendous distance." And so it begins for Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden who, with the shot of a rifle, is thrust into a race to save not only an endangered species, but also the life and family he loves. C. J. Box knows the wilderness and he knows how to create a wonderfully authentic, vividly alive sense of place. He has created a memorable new hero: a man who is full of failings, but strong and honorable.
"When a high-powered bullet hits living flesh, it makes a distinctive -pow-WHOP- sound that is unmistakable even at tremendous distance." And so it begins for Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden who, with the shot of a rifle, is thrust into a race to save not only an endangered species, but also the life and family he loves. C. J. Box knows the wilderness and he knows how to create a wonderfully authentic, vividly alive sense of place. He has created a memorable new hero: a man who is full of failings, but strong and honorable.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Kentucky
Sharon said, "I just finished reading a book set in Kentucky, Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio. I put a review here.
Rural Kentucky in the 1950s is not an easy place to grow up in, and it's especially hard for 10-year-old Icy Sparks, a bright, curious child who is orphaned and living with her grandparents. Life becomes even more difficult for Icy when the violent tics and uncontrollable cursing begin. Try as she might, her secrets -- those croaks, jerks, and spasms -- keep slipping out. Her teachers think she's willful, her friends call her the "Frog Child." Exiled from the schoolroom, she spends time in a children's asylum where she learns about being different and teaches her doctors even more. Eventually, Icy finds solace in the company of an obese woman who knows what it's like to be an outcast in this tightly knit Appalachian community.
Rural Kentucky in the 1950s is not an easy place to grow up in, and it's especially hard for 10-year-old Icy Sparks, a bright, curious child who is orphaned and living with her grandparents. Life becomes even more difficult for Icy when the violent tics and uncontrollable cursing begin. Try as she might, her secrets -- those croaks, jerks, and spasms -- keep slipping out. Her teachers think she's willful, her friends call her the "Frog Child." Exiled from the schoolroom, she spends time in a children's asylum where she learns about being different and teaches her doctors even more. Eventually, Icy finds solace in the company of an obese woman who knows what it's like to be an outcast in this tightly knit Appalachian community.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Louisiana
Jill said, "Here's another Louisiana book -- a fantastic look at antebellum slave-holding and marriage and its effect on the people living in this immoral system. (But I bet you already know about this book!)" No, this is new to me, but it looks good. Here's Jill's review of Property by Valerie Martin."
Set in the surreal heat of the antebellum South during a slave rebellion, Property, which won the Orange Prize, takes the form of a dramatic monologue, bringing to the page a voice rarely heard in American fiction: the voice of a woman slaveholder. Manon Gaudet is pretty and petulant, self-absorbed and bored. She has come to a sugar plantation north of New Orleans as a bride, bringing with her a prized piece of property, the young slave Sarah, only to see Sarah become her husband's mistress and bear his child. As the whispers of a slave rebellion grow louder and more threatening, Manon speaks to us of her past and her present, her longings and dreams -- an uncensored, pitch-perfect voice from the heart of moral darkness.
Set in the surreal heat of the antebellum South during a slave rebellion, Property, which won the Orange Prize, takes the form of a dramatic monologue, bringing to the page a voice rarely heard in American fiction: the voice of a woman slaveholder. Manon Gaudet is pretty and petulant, self-absorbed and bored. She has come to a sugar plantation north of New Orleans as a bride, bringing with her a prized piece of property, the young slave Sarah, only to see Sarah become her husband's mistress and bear his child. As the whispers of a slave rebellion grow louder and more threatening, Manon speaks to us of her past and her present, her longings and dreams -- an uncensored, pitch-perfect voice from the heart of moral darkness.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Missouri
Jill said, "I just finished another Tom Sawyer companion novel -- this one about Becky Thatcher. It's called Becky : The Life and Loves of Becky Thatcher by Lenore Hart (my review)."
Becky Thatcher wants to set the record straight. She was never the weeping ninny Mark Twain made her out to be in his famous novel. She knew Samuel Clemens before he was “Mark Twain,” when he was a wide-eyed dreamer who never could get his facts straight. Yes, she was Tom’s childhood sweetheart, but the true story of their love, and the dark secret that tore it apart, never made it into Twain’s novel.
Now married to Tom’s cousin Sid Hopkins, Becky has children of her own to protect while the men of Missouri are off fighting their “un-Civil” War. But when tragedy strikes at home, Becky embarks on a phenomenal quest to find her husband and save her family -- a life journey that takes her from the Mississippi River’s steamboats to Ozark rebel camps, from Nevada’s silver mines to the gilded streets of San Francisco.
Time and again, stubborn but levelheaded Becky must reconcile her independent spirit and thirst for adventure with the era’s narrow notions of marriage and motherhood. As she seeks to find a compromise between fulfillment and security, she also grapples with ghosts of her past. Can she forgive herself, or be forgiven, for the lies she’s told to the men she’s loved? Will she ever forget the maddening, sweet-talking, irresponsible Tom Sawyer, the boy who stole her heart as a little girl? And when she is old, and Huck and Tom and Twain only memories, whose shadow will still lie beside her?
Becky Thatcher wants to set the record straight. She was never the weeping ninny Mark Twain made her out to be in his famous novel. She knew Samuel Clemens before he was “Mark Twain,” when he was a wide-eyed dreamer who never could get his facts straight. Yes, she was Tom’s childhood sweetheart, but the true story of their love, and the dark secret that tore it apart, never made it into Twain’s novel. Now married to Tom’s cousin Sid Hopkins, Becky has children of her own to protect while the men of Missouri are off fighting their “un-Civil” War. But when tragedy strikes at home, Becky embarks on a phenomenal quest to find her husband and save her family -- a life journey that takes her from the Mississippi River’s steamboats to Ozark rebel camps, from Nevada’s silver mines to the gilded streets of San Francisco.
Time and again, stubborn but levelheaded Becky must reconcile her independent spirit and thirst for adventure with the era’s narrow notions of marriage and motherhood. As she seeks to find a compromise between fulfillment and security, she also grapples with ghosts of her past. Can she forgive herself, or be forgiven, for the lies she’s told to the men she’s loved? Will she ever forget the maddening, sweet-talking, irresponsible Tom Sawyer, the boy who stole her heart as a little girl? And when she is old, and Huck and Tom and Twain only memories, whose shadow will still lie beside her?
Monday, April 21, 2008
Texas
Jill said, "My Texas book is The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block (review). This was a GREAT book - highly recommended."
In Stefan Merrill Block’s The Story of Forgetting, three narratives intertwine to create a story that is by turns funny, smart, introspective, and revelatory. Abel Haggard is an elderly hunchback who haunts the remnants of his family’s farm in the encroaching shadow of the Dallas suburbs, adrift in recollections of those he loved and lost long ago. As a young man, he believed himself to be “the one person too many”; now he is all that remains. Hundreds of miles to the south, in Austin, Seth Waller is a teenage “Master of Nothingness” –- a prime specimen of that gangly, pimple-rashed, too-smart breed of adolescent that vanishes in a puff of sarcasm at the slightest threat of human contact. When his mother is diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s, Seth sets out on a quest to find her lost relatives and to conduct an “empirical investigation” that will uncover the truth of her genetic history. Though neither knows of the other’s existence, Abel and Seth are linked by a dual legacy: the disease that destroys the memories of those they love, and the story of a mythical place called Isidora, a fantasy world free from the sorrows of remembrance, a land without memory where nothing is ever possessed, so nothing can be lost.
In Stefan Merrill Block’s The Story of Forgetting, three narratives intertwine to create a story that is by turns funny, smart, introspective, and revelatory. Abel Haggard is an elderly hunchback who haunts the remnants of his family’s farm in the encroaching shadow of the Dallas suburbs, adrift in recollections of those he loved and lost long ago. As a young man, he believed himself to be “the one person too many”; now he is all that remains. Hundreds of miles to the south, in Austin, Seth Waller is a teenage “Master of Nothingness” –- a prime specimen of that gangly, pimple-rashed, too-smart breed of adolescent that vanishes in a puff of sarcasm at the slightest threat of human contact. When his mother is diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s, Seth sets out on a quest to find her lost relatives and to conduct an “empirical investigation” that will uncover the truth of her genetic history. Though neither knows of the other’s existence, Abel and Seth are linked by a dual legacy: the disease that destroys the memories of those they love, and the story of a mythical place called Isidora, a fantasy world free from the sorrows of remembrance, a land without memory where nothing is ever possessed, so nothing can be lost.
Friday, March 21, 2008
South Carolina
Jill said, "I would like to add the soon-to-be-released Dorothea Benton Frank book to the SC list. It's called Bulls Island and will be in book stores in May 2008. While not my style of fiction, I did enjoy Frank's depictions of South Carolina. Here is my review."
"Will romance triumph over the feud between the aristocratic Langleys and the slightly lower-in-social-pecking-order McGees in Frank's latest Southern charm-filled romp?" asked PW. After twenty years Betts, a top investment bank executive, must leave her comfortable life in New York City to return to the home she thought she'd left behind forever. But spearheading the most important project of her career puts her back in contact with everything she's tried so hard to forget: her estranged sister, her father, her former fiancee J. D. Langley, and her past. Once she's home, can Betts keep the secret that threatens all she holds dear? Or will her fear of the past wreck her future happiness?
(Since Jill doesn't really care much for this book, I think we have a problem. Are we trying to find all the books we can about a state? Or do we want to find only the BEST books about each state? More on this problem coming up.)
"Will romance triumph over the feud between the aristocratic Langleys and the slightly lower-in-social-pecking-order McGees in Frank's latest Southern charm-filled romp?" asked PW. After twenty years Betts, a top investment bank executive, must leave her comfortable life in New York City to return to the home she thought she'd left behind forever. But spearheading the most important project of her career puts her back in contact with everything she's tried so hard to forget: her estranged sister, her father, her former fiancee J. D. Langley, and her past. Once she's home, can Betts keep the secret that threatens all she holds dear? Or will her fear of the past wreck her future happiness?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Michigan
Sharon said, "For Michigan I would like to suggest A Superior Death by Nevada Barr, one of my favorite authors."
Park ranger Anna Pigeon returns, in a mystery that unfolds in and around Lake Superior, in whose chilling depths sunken treasure comes with a deadly price. In her latest mystery, Nevada Barr sends Ranger Pigeon to a new post amid the cold, deserted, and isolated beauty of Isle Royale National Park, a remote island off the coast of Michigan known for fantastic deep-water dives of wrecked sailing vessels. Leaving behind memories of the Texas high desert and the environmental scam she helped uncover, Anna is adjusting to the cool damp of Lake Superior and the spirits and lore of the northern Midwest. But when a routine application for a diving permit reveals a grisly underwater murder, Anna finds herself 260 feet below the forbidding surface of the lake, searching for the connection between a drowned man and an age-old cargo ship. Written with a naturalist's feel for the wilderness and a keen understanding of characters who thrive in extreme conditions, A Superior Death is a passionate, atmospheric page-turner.
Park ranger Anna Pigeon returns, in a mystery that unfolds in and around Lake Superior, in whose chilling depths sunken treasure comes with a deadly price. In her latest mystery, Nevada Barr sends Ranger Pigeon to a new post amid the cold, deserted, and isolated beauty of Isle Royale National Park, a remote island off the coast of Michigan known for fantastic deep-water dives of wrecked sailing vessels. Leaving behind memories of the Texas high desert and the environmental scam she helped uncover, Anna is adjusting to the cool damp of Lake Superior and the spirits and lore of the northern Midwest. But when a routine application for a diving permit reveals a grisly underwater murder, Anna finds herself 260 feet below the forbidding surface of the lake, searching for the connection between a drowned man and an age-old cargo ship. Written with a naturalist's feel for the wilderness and a keen understanding of characters who thrive in extreme conditions, A Superior Death is a passionate, atmospheric page-turner.
Hawaii
Sharon said, "Hello, I have a couple of suggestions for Hawaii. The first one, Moloka'i by Alan Brennert, is on my list to be read. The second one is Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii by Lee Goldberg. Hope this is helpful."
Young Rachel Kalama, growing up in idyllic Honolulu in the 1890s, is part of a big, loving Hawaiian family, and dreams of seeing the far-off lands that her father, a merchant seaman, often visits. But at the age of seven, Rachel and her dreams are shattered by the discovery that she has leprosy. Forcibly removed from her family, she is sent to Kalaupapa, the isolated leper colony on the island of Moloka'i. In her exile she finds a family of friends to replace the family she's lost: a native healer, Haleola, who becomes her adopted "auntie" and makes Rachel aware of the rich culture and mythology of her people; Sister Mary Catherine Voorhies, one of the Franciscan sisters who care for young girls at Kalaupapa; and the beautiful, worldly Leilani, who harbors a surprising secret. At Kalaupapa she also meets the man she will one day marry. True to historical accounts, Moloka'i is the story of an extraordinary human drama, the full scope and pathos of which has never been told before in fiction. But Rachel's life, though shadowed by disease, isolation, and tragedy, is also one of joy, courage, and dignity. This is a story about life, not death; hope, not despair. It is not about the failings of flesh, but the strength of the human spirit.
UPDATE: Jill said, "I just finished Moloka'i and it was an excellent historical account of Hawaii. While I found some historical issues with the book, I walked away with a greater sense of Hawaiian history. My review."
__________
Some people think Hawaii is paradise, but Monk knows that danger, like dirt, lurks everywhere. Look at Helen Gruber, the rich tourist who took a fatal blow from a coconut. The police say it fell from a tree, but Monk suspects otherwise. His assistant Natalie isn't exactly thrilled about Monk's latest investigation. It was bad enough Monk followed her on vacation, and now it looks like the vacation is over. Smooth-talking TV psychic Dylan Swift is on the island and claims to have a message from beyond-from Helen Gruber. Monk has his doubts about Swift's credibility. But finding the killer and proving Swift a fraud-all while coping with geckos and the horror of unsynchronized ceiling fans-may prove a tough coconut to crack.
Young Rachel Kalama, growing up in idyllic Honolulu in the 1890s, is part of a big, loving Hawaiian family, and dreams of seeing the far-off lands that her father, a merchant seaman, often visits. But at the age of seven, Rachel and her dreams are shattered by the discovery that she has leprosy. Forcibly removed from her family, she is sent to Kalaupapa, the isolated leper colony on the island of Moloka'i. In her exile she finds a family of friends to replace the family she's lost: a native healer, Haleola, who becomes her adopted "auntie" and makes Rachel aware of the rich culture and mythology of her people; Sister Mary Catherine Voorhies, one of the Franciscan sisters who care for young girls at Kalaupapa; and the beautiful, worldly Leilani, who harbors a surprising secret. At Kalaupapa she also meets the man she will one day marry. True to historical accounts, Moloka'i is the story of an extraordinary human drama, the full scope and pathos of which has never been told before in fiction. But Rachel's life, though shadowed by disease, isolation, and tragedy, is also one of joy, courage, and dignity. This is a story about life, not death; hope, not despair. It is not about the failings of flesh, but the strength of the human spirit.UPDATE: Jill said, "I just finished Moloka'i and it was an excellent historical account of Hawaii. While I found some historical issues with the book, I walked away with a greater sense of Hawaiian history. My review."
__________
Some people think Hawaii is paradise, but Monk knows that danger, like dirt, lurks everywhere. Look at Helen Gruber, the rich tourist who took a fatal blow from a coconut. The police say it fell from a tree, but Monk suspects otherwise. His assistant Natalie isn't exactly thrilled about Monk's latest investigation. It was bad enough Monk followed her on vacation, and now it looks like the vacation is over. Smooth-talking TV psychic Dylan Swift is on the island and claims to have a message from beyond-from Helen Gruber. Monk has his doubts about Swift's credibility. But finding the killer and proving Swift a fraud-all while coping with geckos and the horror of unsynchronized ceiling fans-may prove a tough coconut to crack.
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