Booktalking Colorado - Full Booktalk Record

Booktalking Colorado Full Record:

	Title:	The Transall Saga
	Author:	Paulsen, Gary
	Date Published:	1998
	Genre:	Fantasy
	Grade Level:	6 - 9
	Booktalker:	Sam Marsh

Booktalk:
I was 13 and on my first solo-backpacking trip through the desert when I was transported by the bluish white light. A rattler bit my hand just before I fell into the light, but the bite was gone when I looked at my hand. I let the hand fall into the “red” (red?) grass that I was on and looked around the clearing at the trees with their red-tinted leaves. Was it the snake venom causing hallucinations? Luckily, I had risen when I heard the snorting. I was near enough to the trees that I could jump into the lower branches of one when the buffalo/pig-like creature charged. When it couldn’t locate me, it ambled back into the forest. I must be on another planet, I reasoned, but I still was me and hungry so my basic survival skills came to the fore. The rain was bitter and tasted mediciny, the compass didn’t seem to work properly, and the “birds” still plopped poop on my face. After I escaped from the quicksand, and the biting insects that I sat down in, I ripped off my shirt, boots and jeans to make sure to rid myself of all the insects. Of course that’s when the buffalo creature decided to find me again. It was the end of my shirt and one of my hiking boots. The creature also left my compass broken and my matches smashed and the insect bites were itching like mad. I was hungry and miserable, but try as I could the strange place just wouldn’t go away. I was stuck, and unless I didn’t want to live, I was going to have to find things to eat and ways to learn to take care of myself.