He said many of the older children have written some of their own short stories and want advice.

On Key’s website there is resource material for teaching “Alabama Moon” in schools. He also answers questions from the students, who have usually just read one or two of his novels.

Typically, for school appearances, Key said he talks about the background of his books, including the survival class, and the writing process. “My experience just gave me a lot of insight into how hard it is to get food while you’re out there, and it’s not just all ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah and blue bird on my shoulder’ when you’re living out there for two weeks.” “We just don’t have the skills to do that any more or most people don’t. “A lot of ‘Alabama Moon’ is about how far we’ve come from being connected to the wilderness and how we’re not really suited to live in the woods like Indians did,” he said. Key’s understanding of the wilderness came when he designed a two-week survival class for him and some friends while attending Birmingham-Southern College. When his father dies, Moon tries to follow his father’s wishes for him to go to Alaska and find others like them. “It’ll be fun to connect with kids that feel a real connection to the locals in the book,” he said.Īccording to Key’s website, “Alabama Moon” tells the story of a young boy named Moon who has grown up in the wilderness with his father. Although Key has been to Tuscaloosa many times, this will be his first visit to speak about his books.

As the spirited and resourceful Moon encounters constables, jails, institutions, lawyers, true friends, and true enemies, he adapts his wilderness survival skills and learns to survive in the outside world, and even, perhaps, make his home there.Īlabama Moon is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.An Alabama-based writer will be in Tuscaloosa today, speaking to students at Sipsey Valley Middle School and making a public appearance at the Tuscaloosa Public Library.Īlbert Watkins Key Jr., who publishes under the name Watt Key, has published three books including “Alabama Moon,” which is based partly in Tuscaloosa and has been made into a movie. But Moon is soon caught and entangled in a world he doesn't know or understand he's become property of the government he has been avoiding all his life. When Moon's father dies, Moon follows his father's last instructions: to travel to Alaska to find others like themselves. They keep to themselves, their only contact with other human beings an occasional trip to the nearest general store.

In this compelling, action-packed book, Watt Key gives us the thrilling coming-of-age story of the unique and extremely appealing Alabama Moon, the basis for the film of the same name starring Jimmy Bennett and John Goodman.įor as long as ten-year-old Moon can remember, he has lived out in the forest in a shelter with his father.

Dirt road home by watt key