Adventures Far From Home
by
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And then the sky started to glow in colors again.
"Oh look," whispered Rose, who saw it first. They stood and watched the colors develop. There was a deep purple that sounded like a tuba, then red lines that sounded like the tinkling of mandolins.
And then it faded once more.
Rose and Carol went slowly down the stairs and outside. Here they found Paddy and Porphyry.
"How are you doing?" Porphyry asked. "Are you enjoying it?"
"Oh, Porphyry," said Carol, "it's the most fun I've ever had in my life."
"Me too," added Rose.
Paddy chuckled, and his eyes twinkled.
"Porphyry," asked Rose, "what makes the sky have all those bright colors?"
"Those are the Northern Lights. High above the earth there is a layer of the atmosphere where the air is mostly ions. Sometimes the sun put out radiation that makes those ions glow in colors. The closer you are to the Poles the better is your chance of seeing it."
"But why can we hear them?" Carol asked.
Paddy chuckled again. "You can only hear them when things are magic."
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About the Book
In the Central American country of Costa Rica archaeologists have found smoothly carved stone spheres of various sizes, but they don’t know who made them nor why. The first story is a fanciful explanation of the origin of these stone balls.
In the first story Costa Rica has been destroyed by an erupting volcano. Rose and Carol are invited to join children from all over the world helping to rebuild the landscape. They spend the summer doing such things as carving trees, painting flowers, caring for baby animals and birds, and riding around on a flying carpet with a boy from Arabia. At their final party they find out why the stone balls were made.
In the second story as a reward for this work Rose and Carol are invited to visit the fairies’ Winter Festival in the far north. They spend time in an Eskimo igloo, slide down an ice slide, skate, watch Northern Lights, and learn of a problem that may prevent the festival from coming to a successful conclusion. Rose and Carol become involved with this crisis.
In the third story their younger brother Andy accompanies an Irish neighbor on a visit to Ireland. While there they tramp the Irish hills, explore castles, and encounter leprechauns. Then they have to race down the Shannon River trying to escape leprechauns that are chasing them.
Come with Rose, Carol, and Andy on these adventures.
About the Author
I am the oldest of five children. As a child I loved the magic of fairy stories.
The children of my brothers and sisters are very special to me. The brother next after me took his wife and two daughters to Costa Rica to become missionaries. He wrote that their older girl, Sharon, age 5, was learning to read, but she didn’t want her parents to know this because she wanted them to read to her. I decided to show her there are rewards for learning to read, so I wrote to her that if she learned to read and her mommy and daddy sent me a letter saying she could read I would write her a story. Soon I received a letter from her saying she could read and asking me to write her a story. When her family was back here for their first furlough with a baby brother and she was eight I gave her her story for Christmas.
Not long after that I received a letter from her younger sister, Becky, asking me to write her a story. I hadn’t expected to have to write another one, and it took me a year to think up a plot. Becky received her story at their next furlough, when she was nine.
Andy didn’t get his story until he was 15 and living with his parents at a new mission in Spain. It was delivered to him by his Aunt Mary and Uncle Peter who were on their way back to their mission in Japan.
I love ice and snow. In 2006 I moved from Chicago to Fairbanks, Alaska, where ice and snow and northern lights abound, because I thought it would be a great adventure. And it has been.