All that glitters is gold...or cholera: Walk on Earth a Stranger, by Rae Carson

Walk on Earth a Stranger

Rae Carson

Harper Collins, 2015

ISBN: 978-0062242914

Lee Westfall is relatively content in her life in a Georgia homestead with her mother and ailing father, though she does wish they could use the windfall from her secret ability to sense gold to improve things without major ramifications.  Major ramifications take that choice away from her when she returns home from school one day to find her parents murdered and their hidden gold findings missing.  With nothing to hold her back, her best friend Jefferson, a half Cherokee boy urges her to run away west with him in pursuit of the gold that is there for the taking in California.  Lee is reluctant, and Jeff sets off with the promise that he’ll wait as long as he can in Independence, MO for her if she decides to join. When her uncle turns up at the funeral covered in gold dust that only Lee can sense and tells her he has plans for her it is abundantly clear to Lee that he is behind her parents deaths.  Lee realizes her best option is to follow Jeff west, disguises herself as a boy, and begins the formidable, perilous and adventure filled journey west - to Jeff, gold, and away from her uncle and past.  Along the way she, along with the millions who also made the historic journey, will encounter no less than bandits, buffalo, brutality, racial tensions, starvation, exposure, medical emergencies, all while trying to stay alive and hide her identity and talent.  This is a nonstop historical fiction with a touch of whimsy and a promise of future romance, and it is wholly engrossingly fabulous!  With realistic characters in realistic yet hard to fathom from a contemporary standpoint, it is a strong recommendation for all libraries serving teen patrons or with adults who love YA.  Basically, unless you have no money, buy this book.     

Perhaps the most articulate way to say this is that some books can be hugely absorbing, and I found that to be the case with this one.  But a better way to say it is this: a book has not hit my squee button like this in quite some time - like May, when I read the Royal We (or actually probably also Uprooted).  

Tidbits: Gitmo' Shady

• If you follow this blog on the casual, you well know my fervent dreamwish of one day partaking in a live-action version of Oregon Trail (seriously, reality tv - make it happen).  Thank you, Mental Floss, for providing this history lesson on the history lesson game. 
• Shame on you, reader.  You forgot Harry Potter's Larry Bird birthday (he turned 33 yesterday)!  Don't worry.  I did too.  Here are some cakes to celebrate, and here is Ron Weasley's message to his bff.

• Recipe for a Downton Abbey Party (or like 50 - so more of a guide!): I'm in if there's costumes involved.

• Some clever fiend who knows YA Lit and wants to make you nonreading, judging adults read made a Buzzfeed.  Well played, sir or madam.  (This is like the YA Librarians guide to some of the best recommendations in YA today.)

• Jane Austen's got mad scrilla, y'all.  Incidentally, some truly horrible Internet trolls cant handle it, and have nothing better to do than hide behind an IP address and threaten the woman who made it happen.  Grow a pair, dipsh*ts.   

• In other things British that you probably already know about, someone named JK Rowling published a book under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.  And then someone spilled the beans.  Luckily, the New York Times saw this as an opportunity to make other authors come up with some pretty fantastic pseudonyms.  Especially you, Carl Hiaasen

• Jellicoe Road movie news (I'd totally partake in a Kickstarter, for the first and only time, for this to happen.  Just sayin'...)

• Are you even more behind the time than moi?  Well, get with it campers: the Catching Fire trailer is out, and it's pretty solid (spoiler alert: Peeta gets a hair upgrade, Finnick sans shirt, Stanley Tucci will probably haunt your dreams, you get the idea).  The Forever YA girls break it down here. 

• Shock me, shock me, shock me with that deviant behavior.  Fifty Shades is the most popular book at Gitmo?  Get out, Reuters!

Case of the Terribles: The Incident of the Toilet Mug

Believe it or not, this is a coffee mug.

If someone gave me this, I'd have to reconsider our friendship.   Clearly said "friends" would be trying to make me die of dysentery on the sly, so they can ford the river and get to Oregon before I do. 
Think again, punks!

But really, who should I give this to?

Let's make my dreams of dysentery a reality.

On snow day #4.5 of 2011, I woke up, rubbed my eyes in the dewy morning light, fired up the ole laptop and checked the headlines. I gasped. Not because of what is happening in the world, or because the Snowpocalypse was upon us yet again. Oh no. The following headline caught my sluggish morning attention: "Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego to go on Facebook." The article, which is really mostly about the company doing this game making for Facebook, ultimately fails to adequately capture the fervent love of my generation for the Oregon Trail. It states:

"[T]he game migrated to succeeding generations of classroom PCs, where it became a favorite among schoolchildren. Players are cast as 19th-century pioneers trying to survive a journey from Missouri to Oregon, fending off hunger, disease, and accidents."

Um, just a "favorite?" Hello understatement. A search for Oregon Trail on CafePress turns up 155 t-shirts, all spun from the images and vernacular of the original low-tech graphics game. My personal favorites are all dysentery related. Why, oh why would my favorites be those of the dying a violent death due to epic poo-ing? Because in a highlight of my life, 6 summers ago, my all-American co-administrators at an all-girls overnight camp and I convinced our lone British colleague to create a live-action role playing version of this game.

It was...amazing. As you can see above, we made the teenagers be the hunted animals, and had packs of eight year old girls screaming joyfully while pegging them with water balloons. The bison herd had a rough day. The camp director walked around carrying a scythe, impersonating death. There were old prospectors, a build and test a raft station, and oh yes, oh yes, there was Dysentery. And oh yes, oh yes, I played the timeless and classic role of Dysentery. As you would expect, Dysentery wore brown, carried a roll of toilet paper, and hung out by the water fountains and wash-houses. Dysentery, to her great joy and to the chagrin of her unwitting victims, repeatedly used the infamous Oregon Trail line "You have died of dysentary!"

In short, it was pretty fantastic. Also fantastic? Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. I hard-out loved that show. It was one of the very few programs I was allowed to watch, airing on the ever safe PBS. I wanted to go on that show so so bad, and have my chance to run around and put flaring lights on the correct countries, buzz in to best Carmen at her own game, and rock out with Rockapella. I was delighted to discover that one of my C.I.T.'s (at the same camp, clearly a breeding ground for coolness) had actually BEEN ON THE SHOW.

Now, let me just say that video games in general are not my thing, with the exception of Oregon Trail. Facebook games? Reallllly are not for me. Despite my great love of these two fantastic game shows, I probably won't be playing them on the 'book. But I am excited they will be making it back into the public eye. Why? They are pretty much the two exceptions to my No-Reality-TV-Shows rule (along with Amazing Race, someday). I feel that their increase in popularity could, just maybe, might, result in some crazy-awesome Hollywood producer being all "HECK YES, let's turn this into a show!" I mean, PBS (or rather Thirteen/WNET New York and Wall to Wall Television) did Frontier House, Texas Ranch House, and Colonial House. Why not My House is a Chuck Wagon and We're Headed West for Oregon? And why not an adult game-show version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I mean...come on. If they can be Facebook games, and if film adaptations of Ouija and Battleship are in the works, why can't they have their spot of honor on my DVR list? Seriously, Hollywood. Get. It. Together.

Come on, people. I can't be the only one.
Join me in my appeal:

Thirteen/WNET New York and Wall to Wall Television, if you are out there, make Oregon Trail the reality show happen!

And call then me. If you need someone to ford some rivers, go hunt buffalo, and NOT die of dysentery, I'm your woman.