Media Matters

Take a Hike

And make it a kid’s adventure. Jeff Alt ’96 MS ’97 shares how.

"I wanted to create something that would help kids discover how fun it is to be outdoors and do it in a way that gives a sense of adventure, a cross between National Treasure and Indiana Jones," said Jeff Alt ’96 MS ’97, author of The Adventures of Bubba Jones series.

If you want your kids to join you on hikes — and we’re talking big ones like trails at Acadia National Park — start them young, psych them up, and let them lead.

These are tips from Jeff Alt ’96 MS ’97, whose own family — wife Beth MA ’97, Madison, 14, and William, 11 — loves throwing on packs and lacing up their boots.

Might surprise you to know that Alt encourages his kids to bring along their smartphones.

“When Lewis and Clark went West, they had the most technologically advanced equipment available to them,” said the author of the award-winning national park youth series The Adventures of Bubba Jones.

Before you pull up stakes and move your tent away from his, know that he wants youthful adventurers to use their technology as tools, not toys. That might mean posting one Instagram a day about their trip or downloading a bird identification app.

Alt started his first book, the nonfiction A Walk For Sunshine, while working on his master’s. That’s also when he met his wife, a hotel beach dweller at the time. But he converted her. Married on the Oxford campus in Sesquicentennial, they wore backpacks out of the chapel, trailing energy bars behind them.

A speech language pathologist, as well as author, he works part time for Mason City Schools. He writes young adult fiction to counter other books’ violent themes that he feels are desensitizing children.

In Alt’s series, for ages 8 and up, Tommy “Bubba Jones” and sister Jenny “Hug-a-Bug” inherit time travel skills and solve mysteries while learning about U.S. National Parks.

“My idea is if the kids read the books, they can become more of the trip planner, just like a family at Kings Island, with the kid saying, ‘Mom, can we go ride the Beast?’ Let them pick the activity in the park, and then they are going to be highly motivated to do it.”

Amazing Ants: Simple Sidewalk Science W. Barkley Butler ’64 Royal Fireworks Press Using ants as an interesting and convenient introduction to science for young people, Barkley Butler offers instructions and explanations as he guides readers through the process of developing a series of experiments.

The Poetry of Ralph L. Kinsey: A Rediscovery Jim Meador ’70 CreateSpace This collection reissues the poetry of Ralph L. Kinsey (1912-1982), a noted American poet whose work has been neglected since his death. It contains all the poetry in his four books, produced between 1954 and 1965, along with five poems published in newspapers and periodicals.

Renaissance Olympian Robert Oberst ’72 Global Future Press In this second book in a series, the story picks up after Gene Oberst returns from the Chariots of Fire Olympics in Paris and travels to Louisiana for his first coaching position. After climbing the coaching ladder and living in eight cities in a dozen years, Gene finds serenity as a popular history professor and artist. The series’ first book, Gene ‘Kentuck’ Oberst — Olympian, coincided with the 2016 Rio Olympics.

My Pashtun Rabbi David Eden ’74 BookBaby A narrative of identity, religion, brotherhood, renewal, and trust, David Eden’s is a tale of his life-changing experience as an American Jew hired to be the “journalism expert” at United Arab Emirates University during the beginning of a worldwide financial collapse and another war in Gaza.

How Christmas Got Its Colors Jim Melko ’80 MEd ’81 CreateSpace A 2018 Purple Dragonfly Book Award Winner, for grade levels 4-6, this story tells how the colors of red and green, disgraced in the Garden of Eden, save the Baby Jesus and become symbols of the joy of Christmas.

One Person, No Vote Carol Anderson ’81 MA ’82 Bloomsbury Publishing Focusing on the aftermath of the 2013 Supreme Court’s Shelby ruling, which allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice, Carol Anderson follows the story of government-dictated racial discrimination as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws. She explains how voter suppression works and explores the resistance.

The Dogs of Detroit Brad Felver ’04 University of Pittsburgh Press Winner of the 2018 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for short fiction, these 14 stories focus on grief and its many permutations. This grief alternately devolves into violence, silence, solitude, and utter isolation. Many of the stories use grief as a prism to explore the beguiling bonds within families.

Dare To Move Garrett Wood ’13 Merrimack Media Based on true events, this coming-of-age novel with Sex and the City elements follows Nicole Winston, 22, a feisty go-getter millennial navigating a male-dominated industry, hustling to pursue her dream job in fitness, and never relenting until she has it all: true love, job love, and self-love.