Kids Learning Stuff went to Alaska!

I've just returned from a ten-day cruise through the Inside Passage, from Seattle to Alaska. One of my regrets (other than regretting I can't go back right away) is that I didn't take a child along with me. Visiting Alaska would be wonderful for children--from the humpback whales, orcas, puffins, totem poles and glaciers to the Tlinglit and Haida Native Alaskans in their colorful regalia, to the sea lions catching fish in the harbor only a few feet from the cruise ship--and a few feet from a group of bald eagles. Then there were the mysterious petroglyphs on boulders in Wrangell (according to Tlingit oral tradition, these petroglyphs were there when they settled the area, which may have been 10,000 years ago---are they from a people who no longer exist, or are they, as some suggest, carved by visitors from another planet?) The Gold Rush days are brought vividly to life in Skagway, where a movie in the National Park Service visitor's center depicts the hardships of the thousands who carried supplies through the snow over the mountain passes. For the brave (and non-acrophobic) a narrow-gauge train ride climbs past the tree lines (and past bears and mountain goats), through tunnels and to the mountain top at White Pass, for a while through a cleared passage with snow as high as the roof of the train.
There are many books for children about Alaska--one I read wasThe Klondike Cat, about a young boy who goes to the Gold Rush with his family, smuggling along his beloved cat, which turns out to save the day for his father.
Another book my second graders loved, a few years ago, was Prince William about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, and a fictional little girl who saves a baby seal.