After a little hiatus – I think the Columbia students were on Spring Break – the 50 States of Literature project is back on the road, this time to West Virginia.

I’ve never been to W. Va. and don’t know much about it, except that it’s where Charleston is, it has a couple of cool bridges, and it’s the setting for “Rocket Boys,” a memoir by Homer Hickam, a dreamer of a kid who shook the coal dust off his shoes and grew up to be a NASA engineer. The book was later made into a great little movie called “October Sky” starring a young Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper and Laura Dern. It’s kind of the “Hoosiers” of rocket geeks.

But that’s not the chosen book! (Again, they didn’t ask me…) The book for West Virginia is “Strange as This Weather Has Been” by Ann Pancake. (!) It’s also set in a mining town. Read the summary by Columbia student Melanie Jones. The book has gotten lots of positive comments on Amazon.com — but not as many as “Rocket Boys”…