A piece of literature is more likely than a textbook to capture students' interests and imaginations. Each teacher needs to develop his or her own guidelines or criteria for choosing appropriate literature to use in a geography classroom. Knowing the special needs of one's students and clearly defining course objectives are both important factors. Many American authors, especially of books for young readers, write about places in the world that they may have briefly visited, or perhaps they have never gone to these places. These books may be well written and accurate.
Books written by authors from around the world are readily available.
However, one should be careful never to sacrifice literary quality and content relevance in the interest of finding an indigenous author. The writings of John Steinbeck have traditionally been a staple of high school English departments. His work has valuable applications for the high school geography classroom as well. With these standards in mind, the following is a small sample of the questions that students can explore as they read the novel. Steinbeck describes the land and its people in such vivid detail that the study of geography becomes a natural extension of the literature.