Books in Stories from Where We Live series

Stretching from the Oregon border to the Baja peninsula, the California Coast ecoregion (ecoregions are geographical areas that share similar natural features and cultural history) is known for mild, Mediterranean-like weather. This book gathers stories, poems, and essays chosen because they feature the natural heritage of the region and because kids often are the protagonists. A book in the acclaimed Stories from Where We Live series, "The California Coast" includes pieces both historical and contemporary and many contributions from ethnic groups. Individual pieces tell of gold rush fortunes, Wells Fargo stagecoach "whips," and surfers who brave the sharks in the "Red Triangle." They recall a Native American woman who survived for eighteen years alone on an island and the "Pigeon Express" that carried mail to the Channel Islands in the days before radio. There are pieces about seals and sea otters, foxes amidst the dry chaparral, redwoods and the La Brea tar pits. The book includes information about the region’s habitats and a list of natural areas to visit. Divided into four sections—Adventures, Great Places, Reapers and Sowers, and Wild Lives—this book is a wonderfully imaginative way to get to know the natural life of the California Coast.

Written especially for families (with children ages 9 and up), this collection of stories, poems, and essays explores what makes the Gulf Coast region distinct, both culturally and environmentally. Four sections cover adventures (scalloping and hurricanes, for example); great places (swamps, bayous, lakes, and beaches); reapers and sowers (from cotton farmers to berry pickers); and wild lives (focusing on alligators, egrets, manatees, and other creatures). Featuring Choctaw legends and songs from the cotton fields, this book evokes the literature, history, geography, ecology, and society of one of America’s treasured regions.

The Great Lakes—Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario—are one of the natural wonders of the world. Shaped by glaciers, the lakes and the lands around them have been home to native American nations, explorers, loggers, and farmers as well as visitors who enjoy fishing, boating, and hunting in a region known for cool summers, colorful autumns, and snowy winters. This beautifully-illustrated book conveys the region’s natural heritage through stories, poems, essays, and historical accounts. The book invites readers to meet an Ojibwe girl born in 1777 on the shores of Wisconsin’s Chequamegon Bay; spend a summer hunting for rare plants in rural Indiana or working on an organic farm; watch the Aurora Borealis from atop four hundred high dunes in Michigan. The book is filled with adventures, including crossing an ice bridge above Niagara Falls in the winter of 1899 and sailing on the schooner, "Rouse Simmons," bringing Christmas trees from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Chicago in 1912. Describing canoe trips, fishing expeditions, and encounters with moose, loons, and bears, the book features such well-known writers as Minnesota’s Sigurd Olson, Illinois’ Sandra Cisneros, Indiana’s Edwin Way Teale and Gene Stratton-Porter, and Ontario’s Margaret Atwood.

Children learning to fish in the tidewaters of Chesapeake Bay, a girl escaping Ocean City to see her first American oystercatcher, a family canoeing through Okefenokee Swamp, brothers catching a trophy bass together — these are some of the vivid stories, contemporary and historical, in this multilayered portrait of the South Atlantic Coast. Renowned writers and gifted observers limn the region’s seasons and moods, from autumn along the C&O Canal to kite flying on a spring day in South Carolina. Included are sections on common plants and animals, maps of the region, and a list of parks and nature centers for further study.

Gathering the stories of people whose lives have adapted to the unique features of the North Atlantic coast, the book moves from Wampanoag Indians to eighteenth-century seafarers to contemporary teens. Readers are invited to feel the throb and pulse of the surf as Helen Keller felt it, track an otter through a southern New Hampshire winter, harvest blueberries as the Micmac Indians once did, and join a young boy as he tries to save a lobster from the cooking pot. The lives of fishermen and women, of sailors lost in the fog, of a whale trapped in a pond in Newfoundland—all become richer and more memorable when woven into the fabric of literature. The book is divided, as are all books in the series, into four sections: Adventures, Great Places, Reapers and Sowers, and Wild Lives. The treasure trove of stories, poems, journal entries, and essays about the region is followed by a brief natural history, including a list of areas to visit to experience the wilder side of the North Atlantic Coast region.

The second book in the Stories from Where We Live series focuses on the North American Prairie, which stretches from Alberta south to Texas, east to Illinois. Literature of this region introduces young readers to its natural heritage. This book includes songs and narratives of Plains Indians, tales of 19th-century settlers, and contemporary stories and poems.

The North American Prairie stretches from Alberta and Saskatchewan south to Texas, and from the edge of the Rockies east to Illinois. In the same vein as its predecessor about the North Atlantic Coast, this book gathers the literature of the North American Prairie as a way to introduce young readers to the region’s natural heritage. Herein readers will enjoy songs and narratives of Plains Indians, tales of 19th-century settlers, and contemporary essays and poems.

Spanning Texas to Florida, the Gulf Coast is one of America’s most distinct regions. This book, comprised of poems, essays, journal entries, and information on the area’s natural features, reveals the region’s remarkable richness. With stops in such uniquely southern locales as Texas’s Neches River Bottom, Mississippi’s Pascagoula, and Louisiana’s Bayou Dorcheat, the book introduces dynamic past and present inhabitants of the area, including Choctaw Indians, fur traders, cotton farmers, and city kids. Readers also encounter wild creatures such as rattlesnakes, alligators, mosquitoes, panthers, manatees, and whooping cranes. Literary selections by Zora Neale Hurston, Barry Hannah, E. O. Wilson, Joseph Bruchac, John James Audubon, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and other writers with ties to the Gulf Coast pay tribute to the region’s strong storytelling tradition. Maps and 30 black-and-white illustrations are included.