People said that if you traveled too deep into the chasm, you could look up at midday and see the stars. There were many stories about the Grand Canyon. Jotter dismissed the entire spectacle of stone in a journal she kept during the trip with the scribble, “nice clouds and red cliffs.” There were secrets to be told here: about past climates, warm shallow seas, the inexorable work of uplift and erosion, and the catastrophic clawing of landslides and floods.īut Clover and Jotter had come to find plants, and to make the first botanical study of the Grand Canyon in Western science. Had they been geologists, they would have marveled at their plunge into the past, each river mile eating away another chunk of history, 10,000 years with every splash of the oars. Pale, water- pocked ledges of Kaibab limestone rose out of the Colorado, laid down 270 million years ago when the desert was a sea. Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, two botanists at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, had started down the river 23 days earlier with three boats and four amateur boatmen, none of whom had run the Grand Canyon before. Now sit back, relax, and listen to this story come to life.They entered, at last, the Grand Canyon. And now, across the road there is a girl who may well become a friend!

If only they could find somewhere to stay as long as they want to! But even in this hard life, Janey has one beautiful treasure: a blue willow plate that is both a family heirloom and a consolation to her. The small family found an abandoned shack to stay in for awhile while Dad works in the cotton fields.

Ever since the drought and the dust storm drove Janey Larkin and her family out of northern Texas, they have been traveling around so that Dad can find work planting and harvesting crops in California. The stories that fall under that special permission will all be taken down on that date, so listen now, while they’re available! Today’s story is shared with permission of Penguin Random House Publishing Company.īlue Willow was written by Doris Gates in 1940, and it won a Newbery Honor award. To help bring more stories to more readers, many publishing companies are allowing books that are normally unavailable for copyright reasons to be read out loud and shared with others until June 30, 2023. During this time of Covid, many people aren’t able to use the library in the same way as in the past.

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