Take a detour with Google Lit Trips:

Visit the locations of such of the best stories in Literature

Shmoop is a great site for all lovers of literature, students and teachers.  Find out about some of the greatest literature of our time!

Want to discover your inner author?  The brainstormer is a great way to gain ideas for your own literary gems!  Check it out at: http://www.distractionbeast.com/brainstormer.swf

What a great site to launch our 2009 tour!

Check out the Geography of some of the most enduring literature of all time: Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Wiesel’s Night are just a few examples of the maps on offer.

Check it out here: http://www.googlelittrips.org/

The 2009 Literature Discovery Tour leaves in February.  This year’s tour organiser (that would be me!) invites  students, parents, educators and librarians (and all book lovers, basically) to participate in the development of our route.

I would love some help finding new and exciting online and offline literature to recommend to others.  The aim of the tour is to foster a sense of reading adventure and encourage wider reading choices.

Please leave a comment if you would like to participate.  Alternatively, email me at discoverlit@gmail.com

Our next stop is one for picture fiction lovers.  Big Universe allows you to read and write picture fiction online.  You’re sure to find something you love here.  If you get a chance, check out my first attempt at picture fiction: ‘Discover.’ While the words and pictures have been ‘cut off’ at various places in the story, (something to be aware of if you create your own story), I am still quite proud of it!  Of course, it is based on a true story!

We Tell Stories is certainly worth another stop on our tour. The (Former) General in his Labyrinth by Mohsin Hamid allows you to choose the direction of the story.

Fortunately, our tour guide found ‘The Literature Map‘ just in time! Tourists will find this map a particularly useful tool to discover new authors who write like their old favourites.

Those of us suffering withdrawal from the Harry Potter series, for example, will find this map particularly useful because it shows the other authors we are likely to enjoy. In this case, Philip Pullman.

I suggest you all take the time to check it out while our tour prepares for its next destination…

One of the best things about an online tour is that we can take short detours without moving or paying extra for petrol or accommodation.

Andy, a recent guest on our tour, is responsible for our next stop.  As a reader of all types of Literature and a gifted writer, Andy declared ‘21 steps’ “Not bad”, high praise indeed from any teenager.  The writer,  Charles Cumming, uses Google maps to tell a story that travels across the world.  Chapter 1 begins at the link below:

http://wetellstories.co.uk/stories/week1/

The next stop on our Literature Discovery Tour is a visit to an ancient village in the shadow of a mountain. Watch the twists and turns along the way and remember that it’s never too late to revisit the world’s classic places…This stop really is what you make of it!
Access this stop via the We Tell Stories website