Pop's bridge by Eve Bunting was first published in 2006. It tells the story of the building of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco from the perspective of Robert, the son of one of the ironworkers building the bridge. There's so much to do and see in San Francisco, but it is well worth visiting the
Golden Gate Bridge while you're there. You can walk, drive or bike across and the views are spectacular.
Robert watches the building of the bridge from
Fort Point with his friend Charlie whose dad is a painter on the bridge. Built at the height of the California Gold Rush in 1853, Fort Point was designed to protect San Francisco harbor from foreign attack and is now a National Historic Site. It's full of history and a really nice place to wander around. It's still one of the best places to get a close up view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Robert and Charlie watch the building of the bridge everyday. In the beginning of the story, Robert thinks that the ironworkers are the most important bridge workers and downplays the role of the painter's like Charlie's father, but in the end, he realizes that they're equally important and the jobs they're doing are equally dangerous.
Pop's bridge does a good job of capturing the emotions surrounding the building of the bridge, the riskiness of the venture, and how it captured the hearts of the city.
★ ★ (two readings the first night)
Calico Dorsey by Susan Lendroth is based on the true story of a stray dog adopted and trained by Everett and Alwin Stacy to carry mail between the mining towns of Calico and Bismark, California during the silver rush in 1885. Calico Dorsey actually carried the mail between the towns for nearly three years. In a world of instant information transfer, my son has a hard time imagining what it must have been like to wait for mail that only came once a week and wanted to know if we could train our dog to deliver the mail too. The Author's note includes additional information about the historical origins of the story and a picture of the real Calico Dorsey. The town of Calico is now a State Historical Landmark which was restored by Walter Knott (Knott's Berry Farm) in the 1950s to look as it did in the 1800s. At the height of the boom, the Calico region had close to 500 mines and produced nearly $86 million in silver. While the boom may be over, kids can still see the conditions in which miners worked, ride an old mining cart, and pan for gold. Calico Dorsey is a great start for igniting their imaginations and reliving a piece of history.
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The Seattle Puzzle is part of the Boxcar children series originally created by Gertrude Chandler in 1924. The Seattle Puzzle was added in 2007 and finds the Alden children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny on a business trip to Seattle with their grandfather. The mystery starts almost as soon as they arrive and the children discover riddles left by persons unknown that take them all over the city. My six-year-old son has really enjoyed solving the riddles. He's spent enough time in Seattle to be familiar with some of the major attractions, and thinks it's lots of fun to solve the riddles before the characters do. In the course of solving the riddles, the Aldens visit the 
Whales Passing by Eve Bunting was published in 2003. It's a cute story about a little boy standing with his father and watching the orcas go by. The little boy wonders about the orcas and how they find their way and imagines what they are saying about him in return. Whale watching can be a lot of fun with kids and can be done both from the shore as well as on a boat tour. 
Tim O'Toole and the Wee Folk by Gerald McDermot was published in 1992. Set in Donegal, it retells an old European tale of luck and redemption. "Tim and Kate were so poor they had not a penny or a potato between them...Even the mice were thin from want of food and the cat wouldn't bother with chasing the creatures." Tim set out, traveling the length of the country to see if he could earn some money. When he could walk no further, he stopped and lay down to rest. While you may not want to walk the length of Ireland with your children, 
Apples to Oregon by Deborah Hopkinson and Nancy Carpenter was published in 2004 and is a tall tale loosely based on the story of a pioneer named Henderson Luelling who left Iowa for Oregon in 1847 with his family and a wagon carrying seven hundred plants and young fruit trees (you can find out about the types of plants he brought here 
This book is an in depth account of Keiko's travels and the logistics involved and would be appreciated by children with a scientific bent over the age of 7.