Yellowknife (Dec 06/04) - Anita Daher has turned her book tour for Flight from Bear Canyon into a crash course on the Nahanni National Park Reserve for southern kids.

The author has been using her book signings as an excuse to give presentations on the geological history of the park, the animals and plants that live there and its more recent human history.

"I show this to kids in the south and they have a bit of trouble," she said, holding up a picture of a caribou. "They guess it's a moose."

That's nothing compared to the reaction the Arctic hare pelt and silver fox tail get. Some kids down south get so upset at the sight of real dead animal skins that Daher has to tell them the creatures died naturally in their sleep.

Flight from Bear Canyon is the sequel to her first high-flying adventure featuring Kaylee and her dog Sausage, Flight from Big Tangle.

Daher finds her writing tends to be one move behind when it comes to settings for her stories.

She wrote Flight From Big Tangle when she was living in Yellowknife, but it was inspired by a wildfire near her previous home in Saskatchewan. When she moved on to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., she wrote a book set in Yellowknife. And now that she's living in Winnipeg, she's concocting a story set in the Sault.

Flight from Bear Canyon was inspired by a news story she read, where many caribou had drowned at a river crossing in the Yukon and grizzly bears were congregating to feast on the caribou carcasses.

Daher moved the event to the Nahanni and inserted her fictional characters. After the helicopter she's in crashes in the park, Kaylee and Sausage have to evade the grizzlies and she ends up flying another airplane in the course of the book.

Daher travelled to Fort Simpson and the Nahanni on a research trip, snapping lots of pictures for her editor and her illustrator.

She uses these photos in her book presentations to convey the park's natural wonders.

"I stood on top of Virginia Falls and just felt the earth," she said. "It was amazing."

Daher wears a flight suit to spice up her presentations, because the heroine of her book series, Kaylee, always ends up having to fly herself out of trouble.

Daher bought the black jumpsuit covered in pockets and zippers for her high school reunion in Saskatchewan, which was billed as a "come as you were" party. Daher had spent her teen years wearing army surplus, so she ordered a new flight suit online to wear to the party.

Of course, she was the only one who showed up at the reunion in costume.

Though not a pilot herself, Daher grew up an "Air Force brat" and once worked as a radio operator. Her upbringing meant constant uprooting. Daher has lived all over Western Canada, the North and Ontario.

"I first knew I wanted to write when I was 11 years old, sitting on the floor of the library in Baker Lake," she said.