Storyville, USA

Discovery crests every hill as Dale Peterson and his two children, Britt, 14, and Bayne, 11, set off across America playing a traveling game of their invention: Storyville. When they find an interesting place on the map, usually a very small town whose curious name surely holds a story--say, Monkeys Eyebrow, Kentucky; Hot Coffee, Mississippi; Big Scuffle, Arkansas; or Embarrass, Minnesota--they head for it with all the enthusiasm of the open road. Storyville USA is full of whimsy and the joy of meandering, "a search for old-fashioned America in the garage sale of the open highway." There's often a lilting humor among the sentences as Peterson bridges the youthful world of his children with his own: "We would soon stumble across Humble, and I thought it might be an excellent place to eat some pie."

Once they find an intriguing town, they search for local storytellers, and Storyville USA represents the best of their discoveries. What's nice here is that the towns swiftly become more than quirky names, they become their people--a Mormon missionary in Big Rock Candy Mountain, Utah; a Native man selling jewelry at Wounded Knee, South Dakota; a Mennonite buggy driver in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. And the thrill of meeting these individuals, of wondering who will be met next, drives the narrative as it inevitably drove the journey. Peterson conceives Storyville USA as part history of these often overlooked hamlets--some isolated, others pressed by suburban sprawl--but readers will also feel the fun of traveling with inquisitive kids. All the while, one cannot imagine more quality time between father and children than traveling the great American road searching for stories. --Byron Ricks