Alaska

They came up with a great photograph to indicate how big Alaska is on the cover of this From Sea to Shining Sea volume. Beyond the antlers in the front of the photograph there is a wide expanse of tundra, a forest, a river, more tundra, and off in the distance mountains (and that is cold desert tundra and not frozen tundra like at Lambeau Field). As Barbara A. Somervill explains in her opening chapter, Alaska is called the "last frontier," not to be confused with space, which is the "final frontier." If you put Alaska over the lower forty-eight states, it would reach from San Francisco to Cleveland (but I think that is talking just about the mainland and leaving the Aleutians and the southeast part of the state out of the equation). But while it is the biggest state, Alaska has the third smallest population (Vermont and Wyoming have less people). She also covers the fascinating story of Benny Benson, the 13-year-old who designed the state flag, before moving on to the people, places and events of the Last Frontier. The geography of Alaska is the topic for the book's second chapter, which divides the state into six regions: the North Slope, Western Alaska, the Aleutian region, the Interior, South central Alaska, and Southeast Alaska. What is interesting this time around is that Somervill sets up how the unique geographical characteristics result in different Alaska Native cultures in each region. Alaska has 44,856 square miles of lakes and rivers, but the section of the chapter covering those is called water and ice, reflecting the fact that state is 350 miles south of the North Pole. There are also sections on climate as well as one on plants and animals. The third chapter is about the history of Alaska, the first part of North America to be settled. This time it is the Russians who are the first Europeans to arrive in Alaska, followed by the English and Spanish. In 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward buys Alaska for $7.2 million (about two cents an acre), and "Seward's Folly" seems like a great idea when gold is discovered in the Yukon in 1896. Alaska did not become a territory until 1912, and it was not until World War II that the Alaska-Canada Highway was built connecting it to Washington state. Statehood comes in 1950 (the vote was 64-20 in the Senate, which I find interesting), and the chapter's final section on The Mighty Land of Alaska covers everything from the 1964 earthquake to the "Exxon Valdez" and today's environmental concerns. The next chapter looks at the three branches of state government, and then Somervill takes her young readers on a tour of Juneau, the State Capital. A map of the downtown area show the location of the made government buildings and a few museums (notice in the photograph on the facing page that you can see the Federal Building and figure out some of the others from the map as well). The people and places of Alaska are detailed in the fifth chapter, which begins with the Alaska Nativ