title: Out of the Woods: A True Story of an Unforgettable Event
author:  Rebecca Bond 
description: K-Gr 3This deceptively simple and original picture book recounts an event that happened to the author's grandfather when he was four years old. In 1914, Antonio Willie Giroux lived in a logging hotel run by his mother in the forest by Gowganda Lake in Ontario. Lively and bustling, the hotel catered to travelers and outdoorsmen, as well as to lumberjacks and silver miners. Antonio was an active little boy, curious about the doings of the employees and the goings on of the hotel, and his activities are described in detail. One night, a fire broke out in the woods, and everyone fled to the lake. Ordinarily, different guests inhabited separate areas of the hotel (with travelers on one floor and working men on another), but that night everyone stuck togetherincluding the animals, who took refuge in the lake as well. Distinguished pen-and-ink illustrations with sepia-toned watercolor washes depict the events and characters realistically, dynamically conveying the movement and flow of the story. Some might doubt the plausibility of the animals and people standing so close together, though this is a minor quibble, as this book is less a strict biography and more a remembrance, with some artistic license taken. VERDICT While this wonderful, somewhat complex selection will be useful for those looking to use literature as a jumping-off point for introducing history, as with Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books, the story itself may lack child appeal and its message of unity may be lost on the intended audience.Ellie Lease, Harford County Public Library, MD
zlib_text: **The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon**
  
    
  
   **Pregame**
  
  THE WORLD had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. Trisha
  McFarland discovered this when she was nine years old. At ten o'clock on a
  morning in early June she was sitting in the back seat of her mother's Dodge
  Caravan, wearing her blue Red Sox batting practice jersey (the one with 36
  GORDON on the back) and playing with Mona, her doll. At ten thirty she was
  lost in the woods. By eleven she was trying not to be terrified, trying not to
  let herself think, This is serious, this is very serious. Trying not to think
  that sometimes when people got lost in the woods they got seriously hurt.
  Sometimes they died.
  
  All because I needed to pee, she thought ... except she hadn't needed to pee
  all that badly, and in any case she could have asked Mom and Pete to wait up
  the trail a minute while she went behind a tree. They were fighting again,
  gosh what a surprise that was, and that was why she had dropped behind a
  little bit, 