The Five Skies of Idaho

Confess. What do you think of when I say “Idaho?” Potatoes, right? Well, believe me when I say that, after reading Five Skies (the 2009 Reading Across Rhode Island selection) I know Idaho is a lot more than potatoes! And the author of Five Skies, Ron Carlson, is at his best when presenting what can only be described as the book’s fourth main character – the rugged mountains and canyon gorges of Idaho.

The New York Times describes it this way, “Most impressive, though, is Carlson's evocation of the Western landscape, especially its immensely variable sky. Every few pages there's a new image of this panorama, which shifts from ''a luminescent charcoal ceiling scalloped with glowing seams'' to an ''amorphous glaring canopy'' to an ''ebony quadrant of the sky'' where the ''ghosted flashes of an electrical storm'' are ''blooming like small stars.''

If you are looking for a way to travel to Idaho (without actually spending money on airfare) check out the following sites – and then tell me what you think about when someone says “Idaho?”

1. One of the most beautiful sites about Idaho is called simply Scenic Byways. Choose and click on a locale; then click on View slideshow, sit back and enjoy.
http://www.idahobyways.gov/byways/

2. Idaho – Adventures in Living also has some wonderful photos. Scroll about two-thirds of the way down and find the Snake River Canyon Area.
http://www.visitidaho.org/mapsimages/photo-search-results.aspx?keyword=Twin%20Falls#content

3. And finally, one of the Reading Across Rhode Island Committee members “just happened” to be visiting her brother in Idaho and brought back the following collection of photographs by Dave Cabitto of Meridian, Idaho.

Journey with us to the Five Skies of Idaho

The Reading Across Rhode Island selection for 2009 is Five Skies by Ron Carlson, and the folks at the Rhode Island Center for the Book at Providence Public Library invite you to join with us in exploring and discussing this wonderful book, its characters, its setting and its message.

Five Skies is about a developing friendship among three troubled men: Darwin Gallegos, forman of the group, has lost his wife to a tragic accident; Arthur Key, Hollywood stunt director recently lost his brother in a stunt gone bad, and Ronnie Panelli, a shiftless young man has been in and out of jail for much of his young life. These refugees from the painful past are drawn together one summer by a construction project in the Idaho Rockies – constructing a ramp to nowhere for a bizarre and ill-conceived motorcycle stunt.

Author Ron Carlson makes his first visit to Reading Across Rhode Island 2009 at the RARI Launch Conference, which will be held on Saturday, January 31st from 9:30am – 2:30pm at Bryant University, Smithfield RI. The cost per person is $25.00. The Registration Form is available online and must be submitted by January 22nd.

This conference is designed for librarians, members and leaders of book discussion groups, educators and readers across the state. Please join us in welcoming Ron Carlson and in beginning our state-wide discussion about Five Skies.

If you cannot attend the conference and would like to ask Ron a question, simply post your question on this blog and we will include his answers in a future post. Join the discussion!

Let's Talk about the RARI 2009 book

The Nominating Committee of Reading Across RI is busy reading books for the 2009 selection from the list of over seventy titles nominated this year by readers all over the state. Join in the discussion of the ten books on the 2009 Short List by posting your comments about these books (each title has its own post):

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
Trudy's Promise by Marcia Preston
Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
Song Yet Sung by James McBride
The Nightbirds by Thomas Maltman
The Girls: A Novel by Lori Lansens
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Five Skies by Ron Carlson
Behind the Scenes of the Museum by Kate Atkinson

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
NoveList Summary: Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors.

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman

Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
NoveList Summary: In India, in 1941, when her father becomes brain-damaged in a non-violent protest march, fifteen-year-old Vidya and her family are forced to move in with her father's extended family and become accustomed to a totally different way of life.

Trudy's Promise by Marcia Preston

Trudy's Promise by Marcia Preston
Booklist Review: An act of desperation divides a mother and her child. Only an act of faith can reunite them. Trudy Hulst has no idea if her husband survived his attempted escape past the newly constructed Berlin Wall. But she knows too well the consequences of his actions. Now branded the wife of a defector, she faces a life in prison. With no real choice, she is forced to follow, praying she can find a way to claim their child once she's in West Berlin. Trudy survives a harrowing break for freedom...only to learn her husband was shot during his escape. Alone, she wanders the wall like a ghost, living for brief glimpses of her son, now out of reach behind barbed wire and armed soldiers. Desperate to regain her child, Trudy begins a journey that leads her to America, where she continues an odyssey of hope to find her son.

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat
Booklist Review: In Tehran in the early 1980s, after she leads a strike in high school to get her math teacher to teach calculus not politics, Marina, 16, a practicing Catholic, is locked up for two years and tortured with her school friends in the Ayatollah Khomeini's notorious Evin political prison. She is saved from execution by an interrogator, Ali, who wants to marry her and threatens to hurt her family and Catholic boyfriend, Andre, if she refuses. Forced to convert to Islam, she becomes Ali's wife; then he is assassinated by political rivals, and she rejoins her family and marries Andre. They immigrate to Canada in 1991. For more than 20 years, secure in her middle-class life, she keeps silent, until she writes this unforgettable memoir.

Song Yet Sung by James McBride

Song Yet Sung by James McBride
Booklist Review: Wounded and imprisoned in the Chesapeake Bay attic of vicious slave hunter Patty Stanton, Liz Spocott, 19, foresees the future and leads a breakout of 14 slaves, who are then hounded by hunters from many sides. With a strong focus on the role of women, the author recounts the history of slave revolts without sentimentality in a stirring novel of cruelty, betrayal, and courage, including the part played by the young slave who runs from a kind mistress and is determined to help Liz on the "gospel train to freedom."