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The fabulous wrap-around cover for THE COURAGE TEST.

Confession: About eight years ago, early in this blog’s existence, I was a much more enthusiastic reader of the children’s blogosphere. Over time, I’ve lost most of that energy; there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. I sense that I should be doing other things (like: writing!). And, well, there’s the other thing: I’m not great at networking. I’ve never been comfortable with the sense of “ulterior motive” that comes with those professional relationships. So while it makes good sense for me to make friends with bloggers and reviewers, it really hasn’t happened too often.

(Read: They hate me!)

And then there’s good old Karen Terlecky. I first “met” Karen when she wrote a beautiful, perceptive, generous review for my book, Along Came Spider. I’ve been stalking Karen ever since. No, I don’t drive past her house at night; I just randomly click on her lovely Literate Lives blog, co-written with Bill Prosser (also a friend). Even fuller disclosure: click here and be amazed.

A few weeks back, after Karen expressed an eagerness to read it, I sent Karen an Advance Reader’s Copy of The Courage Test. It would be disingenuous of me to say that I didn’t hope that she’d review it, but in all honestly my primary reason was that I wanted her to read it. I was proud of my book and I wanted Karen to have a copy. 

For Karen’s full post, you know what to do. Or failing that, simply read below and you’ll get all the juicy bits. Thank you so much, Karen, not only for this, but for the important work you do for teachers, writers, and readers everywhere.

The Courage Test by James Preller is a great read that starts with the front cover. I have an ARC, so I’m not sure what the final cover art will look like, but what a great opportunity for a reader to look at the illustrations on the front cover, and begin thinking about what the story might be. So many clues live there – in some ways, it reminds me of the clues on the cover of another favorite, When You Reach Me. It’s a cover you would come back to time and time again as the story unfolds.

I say “the” story, but truly this is a book with multiple story lines contained within the adventure the main character, Will, goes on with his father.

There is the story of Will and his father, somewhat strangers to each other after Will’s dad left him and his mom for a “shiny new life” complete with a new girlfriend. In the story, Will’s dad takes him on a trip to replicate the adventures of Lewis and Clark. Will’s dad is a college professor, a fan of American history, and is trying to write a book about the Lewis and Clark expedition. Will would rather stay home and play baseball than go on a trip with a dad that he feels is no longer a real part of his life. The main story line follows them and their rocky relationship as they try to follow in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark.

There is the summer assignment writing Will has – writing about something interesting that happened to him that summer. (To help the reader discern the different story lines, the summer assignment is the part written in italics.) I found myself mesmerized by all the historical detail Will puts into his writing assignment. So many, many facts about Lewis and Clark about which I had no idea! And having those facts written from Will’s perspective was brilliant on James Preller’s part – it makes reading history so interesting, and in some cases, quite surprising. I think student readers would enjoy the perils they faced as much as I did! This would be a perfect read for a student interested in history, adventure, and survival.

There is the relationship between Will and his mom. They became quite a team once Will’s dad left, and now she is practically pushing him out the door to take this summer trip with his dad. Will feels a bit hurt by that, but we learn even more history in the postcards Will continually sends his mom, with great details about places on the Lewis and Clark trail they’ve seen. In addition, we hear the voice of a boy who just wants contact with his mom.

In addition to these story lines, there are additional supporting character story lines that help move the story along:

• A friend of Will’s dad, Ollie, shows up at one point on the trail, and stays with them awhile.
• Will and his dad find an “illegal girl” – in fact, that is the name of the chapter where they first encounter her.

More good news for my upcoming book, now just a month away from hitting the shelves. The Courage Test has already earned a starred review from Booklist and been named a 2016 Junior Library Guild Selection. Below, please find the full review from School Library Journal. While I am grateful for any positive attention, and impressed with the amount of information the reviewer conveys in a difficult, condensed format, I should clarify two points:

1) Will and his father live in Minneapolis and travel in a long, dull drive to Fort Mandan, North Dakota, where they pick up the old Lewis & Clark Trail. From that point on, they loosely follow the trail all the way to Seaside, Oregon.

Sacagawea on the trail with her son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, nicknamed Pompy.

2) The character of Maria Rosa is 15 and pregnant, not coincidentally in the same condition as that of Sacagawea when the explorers first encountered her in Fort Mandan. Sacagawea grew up with the Shoshones and had been kidnapped by the Hidatsa tribe at around age ten. A few years later she was sold to a fur trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau. It is not clear in The Courage Test that Maria is exactly a “runaway,” but it is strongly intimated that she came into the United States illegally from Mexico, seeking a new life. The title of Chapter Three is “An Illegal Girl,” for example.

Classroom Connections is a series meant to introduce teachers to new books.

Sarvenaz Tash - THE MAPMAKER AND THE GHOST (Walker/Bloomsbury, April 24, 2012)

age range: 8-12
study guide

Could you share with readers a few interesting tidbits you learned while researching? 

My husband and I spent the last few days up in New England, where I was doing research for my new book. It begins with the terrifying tale of a malevolent stowaway at sea, and as we traveled up the Atlantic coast, I seemed to be reminded of the world’s waterways over and over again.

First we were joined by our daring friend, world-famous sailor, and educator par excellence Rich Wilson, who’s getting up-to-speed for his second nonstop single-handed sailboat race all the way around the world. Then we were wowed by a dramatic museum exhibit called The Fiery Pool, which was a name the ancient Mayans used to describe the sea whenever their Sun God rose in the east and whenever it set into its own watery underworld in the west. (They also imagined that the Yucatan Peninsula floated atop a gigantic sea turtle.) I had just seen a new book about the enormous sea of plastic debris that's currently wreaking havoc in a large part of the Pacific Ocean. And all day long every single day, we were blasted by news about the heartbreaking blowout disaster that’s flooding our beloved Gulf of Mexico with oil.

I must have had water on the brain this weekend, because I was stunned to realize what an enormous role our waterways have played in all of my books about history. So I'm blown away when I consider how much these waters have changed from those times until today.

Take the time of Charles Darwin, for example. I've written that he discovered great masses of colorful, amazingly varied animals at sea, found fish fossils high atop mountains that had once lain beneath the ocean, and figured out that coral reefs were built by millions upon millions of delicate coral animals whose rocky ocean homes fringed the bases of volcanic mountains—mountains that had erupted at sea and had then worn away over millions and millions of years.


I've also said that it was Benjamin Franklin who charted the Gulf Stream by taking its temperature so that sailors could travel along this fast, warm “river in the ocean” between Europe and America in a shorter time than ever before. And when Captain John Smith made his wonderfully accurate maps of the Chesapeake Bay and New England, he was so amazed by the bounty of their waterways that he spent the rest of his life writing books to extol America’s natural riches.

During the Revolutionary War, George Rodgers Clark led 170 men on an 18-day march through a flooded river of icy water up to their necks to capture a British fort in Indian country.

And Captain John Paul Jones refused to give up his flaming merchant ship, Bonhomme Richard, to the British when he cried “I have not yet begun to fight” and went on to defeat the great new British warship Serapis.

Lewis and Clark opened the west by traveling upriver, commonly reaching spots boiling with fish so numerous that the explorers caught as many as 700 enormous specimens in a single afternoon.

2 Comments on Water Water Everywhere, last added: 6/2/2010