Posted on by TracyC

Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport

GilaMonsters

Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat, pictures by Byron Barton, 1980.

This is a humorous picture book about a boy moving from one side of the United States to the other and his misconceptions of what he’s going to find when he goes west.

At the beginning of the story, the boy lives in an apartment in  New York City.  As far as he’s concerned, he could live there forever, but his parents decide that they’re going to move “Out West.” (The book never really says what state they’re moving to, but it seems to be somewhere in the Southwestern United States, like Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona.)

GilaMonstersMoving

The boy thinks he’s going to hate his new home.  He thinks of all the things that he’s heard about the West, like there’s cactus everywhere so you hardly know where to sit down, everyone dresses like a cowboy and rides horses everywhere, all he’ll ever get to eat is chili and beans, and he’s bound to die of heat exhaustion in the desert.  His best friend in New York, Seymour, told him that Gila monsters would meet him at the airport.

GilaMonstersCactus

Of course, there aren’t any Gila monsters at the airport when the boy gets there.  Instead, he meets another boy whose family is moving East.  The two boys talk to each other for awhile, and the Western boy starts telling him that he’s not looking forward to heading East because he’s heard that it’s always cold there, the cities are overcrowded and full of gangsters, the buildings are so tall that airplanes fly through the apartments, and there are alligators in the sewers.  He expects to find alligators waiting for him at the airport.

GilaMonstersAirportBoy

Of course, things aren’t as bad as either boy is expecting.  The boy from New York realizes that Seymour and his other friends back East don’t know much about the West, and he starts realizing that things in his new home are actually pretty good, some of them not all that different from home.

GilaMonstersArrival

This book was featured on Reading Rainbow.

Posted on by TracyC

Basil in the Wild West

BasilWestBasil in the Wild West by Eve Titus, 1990.

This book picks up right after the previous book in the Basil of Baker Street Series, Basil in Mexico.

After leaving Mexico, Basil and his best friend Dr. Dawson journey north into the western territories of the United States.  There, some friends of their ask them to investigate a smuggling operation.  Mice have been illegally bringing Mexican antiquities across the border.

Basil realizes that the smugglers have been smuggling the antiquities in the open, pretending that they are ordinary replicas, the kind that tourists often buy.  Because the border guards aren’t experts in antiquities, they haven’t been able to tell the difference between harmless souvenir replicas and the real thing.

When they catch one of these smugglers, they learn that the mastermind behind the scheme is a mouse called J.J. in a town called Moriarty in New Mexico (the name of the town irritates Basil).  They go to the town with the help of some friendly horses and confront J.J..  At first, they think it won’t be too difficult because, although J.J.’s house is well-guarded, he is confined to a wheel chair because of an accident.  However, the wheel chair is an act, and J.J. is no ordinary mouse.

BasilWestPic2Although J.J. escapes, Basil and Dr. Dawson decide that the smuggling ring has been defeated and it’s alright to continue their sight-seeing.  However, their adventures are not over!

Basil and Dawson want to see the Grand Canyon, but it turns out that the hotel where they are staying is being terrorized by a weird, glowing Thing.  Nobody knows what it is, but guests think it could be some kind of ghost or monster, and many of them are too afraid to stay.  The owners of the hotel ask Basil to discover what the Thing is and stop whoever may be behind it before their hotel is ruined!

This book is really two stories in one, and neither has any direct bearing on the other.  In that way, it’s kind of disjointed.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.