Literary Las Vegas: Paula Jones

It was the day after Christmas when 12-year-old Dalton picked up a family history book written by his aunt and literally got lost in the pages. As he dozed off reading a story of a 12-year-old ancestor growing up in the 1800s, he dreamed that he was transported there to learn of a time with “no running water, electricity, bathrooms, cars, cellphones, iPads, iPods, televisions, Xbox games, skateboards or any of the conveniences we have today.”

Dalton’s adventure is shared in local author Paula Jones’ new children’s picture book “Dalton’s Dream.” Jones, who recently retired from working in real estate, was inspired to write the book as a follow-up to compiling her family history into a book. Jones is also the author of “Clark the Shark,” a bully transformation story about a bull shark who reforms his mean-spirited ways. The tale was inspired by the sharks Jones encountered on a shipwreck diving trip in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. For more information about Jones’ work, visit paulajonesauthor.com.

Excerpt from ‘Dalton’s Dream’

I wanted to know what they did for fun. John said that in the summer, once a month, they would have a picnic after church, and the young children would play dress-up or hide-and-seek. He said sometimes he liked to climb his favorite tree and just be by himself, and sometimes he’d kill a squirrel with his slingshot and his mother would cook it. John was the youngest brother, and his friends lived too far away to see often. In the wintertime, everyone was very quiet, he told me. The girls that went to school lived too far away to travel in the winter, so his mother only taught in the spring and summer. His mother and sisters quilted and made clothes, his dad carved corn pipes and furniture, and he liked to carve toys for Christmas.