All this week, to celebrate Children’s Book Week, we’re having a daily book giveway. To enter the giveway, just come back and visit our blog every day and leave a comment each day.

Today’s book for the giveaway is Utah – Book 2 in the Wright On Time series by Lisa M. Cottrell-Bentley.

About the Book:
WRIGHT ON TIME: UTAH
Book 2 of a 50 State Adventure
Join Nadia and Aidan as they continue their RV living homeschool adventure around the USA. The Wrights have joined a dinosaur dig searching for allosaurus bones.
Will they find any? What will they learn?

The Wright on Time series of children’s chapter books are about an RV-living family who travels the USA. Each book is set in a different state with a different fun and educational theme. It’s like taking your child on a wonderous road trip across the USA powered by the imagination! You can pick up any book in the series and enjoy it fully without having read others in the series. Of course, if you want to know the complete story of the Wright family’s adventures, you are going to want to read the other books!

Karen from Utah sent me this chilling tale about the day she saw an accident on the road. The only problem--five minutes later, it wasn't there anymore. 15 years later, the same thing happened again! The story is long, but well worth it:

Hi Jason:

I love your blog! Thanks for your hard work and dedication.

I would like to share an incident that happened to my brother and sister-in-law nearly 30 years ago.

It was a spring evening, just at dusk, it had been raining lightly and the road was wet and the surrounding area slightly misty.They were headed to Salt Lake from Layton Utah, about 30 miles north of Salt Lake.

As they drove along the divided highway, two cars ahead of them came together in a horrible crash! They both witnessed the flying debris and watched as one car flipped and rolled several times finally landing on it's top. My sister-in-law screamed and my brother swerved to miss it. He sped ahead trying to find a spot to turn around to go back and help. He was an undercover narcotics officer so he called for the local Highway Patrol. He found a spot to turn around, placed his light on top of his car and raced back to the scene. They were sure someone had died in this horrible accident. Coming to the spot where it occurred they found nothing! No debris, no car, no skid marks, nothing.

The Highway Patrol Officer showed up and thought maybe he was the brunt of some kind of sick joke. They were both shaking and upset. My brother exited from the car and walked half a mile along the road looking for some sign. There was nothing. They were freaked out to say the least. As they discussed what they had both seen, it was identical, however, they came to realize there was no sound involved. If this horrific accident had happened right in front of them they would have heard something. But there had been no sound.

For a long time they refused to travel this stretch of highway. They weren't sure what they had seen, if it had been a premonition of things to come or what. Fast forward 15 years or so. My husband, who was a state trooper, received a call one morning while on duty, that his father was gravely ill. He stopped to pick me up as we rushed to Salt Lake and the hospital. We spent the day. Things calmed down and my father-in-law was stabilized, so by late afternoon we could head back home. It was a spring evening, it had been raining, and was still misty outside. Over my husband's police radio came a call that a girl had witnessed a horrific accident and gave the approximate area of where the accident took place.

One of the other troopers sped off in search of the crash. A few minutes later the trooper returned to the radio and told the dispatcher he had been to the area three times but found nothing. At that point I said to my husband "he's sure having a hard time finding that accident isn't he?" We both had these funny expressions on our faces when we realized it was in the exact area my brother had also seen the accident. The trooper on the radio continued to say he had been back three times, and there was nothing to indicate there had been an accident anywhere. He wanted to know if someone was playing a joke on them. The dispatcher assured him the young woman was serious, she was very distraught as she was certain that someone had been killed in the accident.

I always have a strange sensation when I drive past the area. I'm sure there was an accident at some time right there. And now, years later, when conditions are right, whoever is there gets to witness it again.

Karen

Yikes! Thanks for the story, Karen. Talk about bad "Car-ma!" Very creepy indeed!

Tanner from Utah sent me this creeped-out tale about something that happened when she was 4 years old to her and her two sisters.

Jason--

When I was about 4 we lived in a huge house in a small town. That house had a record of being haunted. Things would turn on and off and there would be weird noises. One night my two sisters were sleeping in the same room. My sister Cam (not quite asleep) bolted upright because she heard something on the ground. She woke up my sister Shay. Shay looked on the ground by her side of the bed, and she saw me! She said later that I was just laying there smiling up at her. She told me to go back to bed, but when she turned on the light, I had vanished! I wasn't there anymore!

Thing is, I don't think I ever left my bed! So either I have a weird power where I can move instantly to different places or a ghost or something took the form of my body and appeared there in the middle of the night. I don't know why this happened but it sure is weird!

Tanner

ps. I've read your book 3 times!! It was great!

Thanks, Tanner, for sharing that story. Here's hoping that these days you stay put through the night.

Dunn, Mark. 2001. Ella Minnow Pea.

Ella Minnow Pea isn’t a new book, but it is a new-to-me book. Set on a fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina, it follows the lives of a family enduring stress and hardship as their ‘perfect’ society begins to collapse. This society is based on worshipping Nevin Nollop who invented the famous lipogram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” When the letters start falling from the statue or monument, the Council decides that it is a message from beyond-the-grave. The message is clear: each fallen letter must be discarded from use. No words with the fallen letters must ever be used. This eliminates most (if not all) books from the library, and renders teachers practically useless. The punishment is severe and a three strikes you’re out policy is instituted. Can these islanders find a way to save their society? It’s a race against time as each letter falls from place.

Reading Group Guide
Interview with Mark Dunn