Vol. 37, No. 1
March 2007

ONEBOOKAZ

April in Arizona means it’s time for our wonderful spring weather and OneBookAZ.  The OneBook selection this year is Going Back to Bisbee (RC 36851) by Richard Shelton.  Shelton beautifully depicts the landscape and history of southern Arizona from Tucson to Bisbee and includes fascinating stories of Bisbee’s metamorphosis from a bustling mining town to a mecca for hippies in the ‘70’s to the tourist destination and art colony it has become today.  Shelton, a poet and Regents Professor of English at the University of Arizona, reveals much about himself in this book that is part travelogue, part history, part memoir, and completely fascinating.  He won the Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction for Going Back to Bisbee, was nominated for the Pulitzer and the National Book Award for an earlier book, The Bus to Veracruz, and honored in 2006, along with his wife Lois, with the first annual Arizona Literary Treasure Award.

The OneBookAZ selection for young readers is the novel Weedflower (RC 63258) by Cynthia Kadohata.  Weedflower tells the story of a young Japanese American girl whose family is relocated from their flower farm in California to an internment camp on an Indian reservation in Arizona after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Weedflower was also nominated as the adult selection for OneBookAZ, along with Vanished Arizona (AZC 1940) by Martha Summerhayes and These is My Words (AZC 2519) by Nancy Turner.

Both Shelton and Kadohota will make presentations around the state and there will be group discussions of their books in towns and cities all over Arizona during April.  Check with your local public library for OneBookAZ events that may be scheduled during April or check the website, http://www.onebookaz.org. You will want to read these books even if you can’t participate in a discussion group and we have made lots of extra copies to ensure that they are available.

April also means it’s time for the Arizona Book Festival.  The Festival will be held on April 14 at the Carnegie Center, 1101 W. Washington, Phoenix, from 10 am to 5 pm.  Shelton and Kadohota will be on hand that day along with lots of other authors, including Marsha Mehran, Laura Fitzgerald, Jane Yolen, Lois Duncan, and Todd Berger.  Mehran and Fitzgerald both wrote novels that feature Iranian women who make new lives for themselves outside of Iran.  Mehran’s young women end up in Ireland, spicing up the bland diet of the Irish and overcoming the trials of the past, and Fitzgerald sets her story in Tucson, where a young Iranian woman is sent to find a suitable Iranian husband, but things don’t work out as planned.  Both books, Pomegranate Soup by Mehran and Veil of Roses by Fitzgerald, are in production in our studios.  We are also recording Todd Berger’s book, It Happened at Grand Canyon, an account of some of the odd happenings at the Canyon, including the plane crash that led to the formation of the FAA.

         

We hope you enjoy lots of good reading in April and throughout the year.