The long route is at times tedious for the travelers, but not so for readers. Slowly but surely, Ma's sack full of 'everything we'll need' for the trip empties out as its contents saves more than one tense moment from erupting into a disaster. Levitin has used travelers' journals and letters from the late 1800s to concoct an event-filled adventure. Young Amanda tells about their 21-day journey west from Missouri, cramped into a stagecoach with three other adult passengers. Kindergarten-Grade 3?When Pa writes from the California gold fields to say he's lonely, Ma resolves to take her five children and join him. This is what I hope my fiction will provide for my readers, along with entertainment and pleasure. Good fiction informs us about choices and helps us differentiate between what is valuable and what is destructive. I have written several mysteries, because I wonder what leads people into crime. I draw characters from the individuals I have known-my mother, who was courageous and strong, my sisters, acquaintances and friends, some who were wonderful role models, others who betrayed me. “All these feelings and challenges flow into my stories, whether picture books or novels for older readers. I have been the brightest student and also the dullest I have been rejected and also praised for my accomplishments. I have been persecuted, the only Jew in the entire school. I have been an immigrant, an outsider, and lonely in a new land.

Though time and distance may separate me from the event, I can transfer my own feelings-fears and longings- to the characters I am creating. Go West? Maybe not by stagecoach.“Often a newspaper article or a historical event that relates to my own experience triggers my stories.

Is everybody having fun yet? When this credibility-straining journey's over, readers may ask what Pa's doing for a living now since he was a bust as a miner, or why Mama puts up so gleefully with his sexist comments when they meet.

For lunch it's the stage driver's beans and Mama's prunes. Mama quiets them all with sugar lumps from her sack. Baby Betsy throws up on the banker, then gets the hiccups. Rounding out the group for the 21-day trip are a banker, a teacher, and Cowboy Charlie. I am lonely without you,'' Mama and her five children pack, with Mama's sack of needfuls growing fatter by the minute. When Pa sends a letter saying, ''Come to California, my dears. Incidents in the book are based on letters and diaries of travelers (and in the fictional frame, a lot of information about stagecoaches is amicably bestowed upon readers), but there was probably never a trip like this one. 533, etc.) finds an outlandish premise for her story of one family's stagecoach trip to California in the late 1800s, a story that also happily found Smith's winsome illustrations.

Nine for California by Sonia Levitin