Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

PORTLAND - Inquiring parents may want to know: What bedtime stories did Marolyn Tarrant read her children? Did she force-feed them Alpha-Bits or alphabet soup?

Tarrant, of Corvallis, had not one but two children among finalists at the

Her daughter, Linda Crew of Corvallis, won the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature for "A Heart for Any Fate," her novel about a young woman traveling the Oregon Trail. Her son, Register-Guard columnist Bob Welch, was a finalist in the nonfiction category with "American Nightingale," his story of the life and death of World War II nurse Frances Slanger.

University of Oregon history professor James Mohr captured the Frances Fuller Victor Award in that category for "Plague and Fire," his examination of the disastrous government response to a 1900 plague outbreak in Honolulu. Other local winners included Laton Carter of Eugene, who claimed The Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry for "Leaving." And Barry Lopez of Finn Rock won The H.L. Davis Award for Short Fiction for "Resistance."

Judge Jack Weatherford praised the relevance of Mohr's "Plague and Fire" (University of Chicago Press). "By thoughtfully analyzing this case at the intersection of public health, power politics and ethnic tensions at the opening of the 20th century, Mohr provides a lesson from the past that stands as a warning for the future," Weatherford said.

"It's one of those situations where all the books were terrific," Mohr said Friday night after the ceremony. "I'm tremendously honored. The fact that a book of serious history would win I think is a terrific thing.

"It's so nice to be in a state that takes the power of the word so seriously."

This is the first of Mohr's six published books to be nominated for an Oregon Book Award. Having won, the experience will affect him as he goes about writing his next book "to the extent that I'm reminded again that people are interested in history."

Though both of Tarrant's children didn't win Friday night, the family still enjoyed the chance to celebrate Crew's and Welch's literary accomplishments.

"I can hardly wait," Tarrant said Thursday. "I've been to book signings for them, but I've never been able to go when they were honored at banquets before."

For the record, Tarrant remembers that "Waub the Grizzly Bear" and "The Surprise Doll" were among the books she and Warren Welch read to their children. But she insists they did nothing extraordinary to groom them as writers who each would publish multiple books.

She said her late husband was the creative influence in the family.

"He wrote wonderful letters to me from the Pacific during World War II," she said. "And he was always going to write fishing stories, but he was too busy fishing to get them down on paper and market them."

Welch remembers that his parents also nourished his early interest in the sports page of the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

"Mom gave me a little Smith-Corona typewriter for my fifth birthday," he said, recalling that he used it to type up stories about imaginary OSU football games.

And Crew said her mother nurtured them as readers by exposing them to books.

"We were taken to the library - she turned us on to that," Crew said. "People didn't own books then like they do today."

Her winning novel, "A Heart for Any Fate" (Oregon Historical Society Press), drew praise from Judge Lois Lowry, who said Crew "makes the past come alive for the young reader by creating characters with personalities that we understand and know."

This was Crew's third book to be nominated for an award, but her first to win, and the most deserving, Crew said.

"Right now this is my favorite book," she said. "It's just so close to my heart. I just love Oregon Trail stories."

To research the book, she and her husband drove the length of the trail. And to now have an Oregon Book Award sticker on the novel is a "nice validation," Crew said.

Judge Mark Doty lauded Carter's poems on working in "Leaving" (The University of Chicago Press). "Reading him reminds us how rare the subject is in our poetry; his attention moves again and again to the ways people hold themselves on the way there or the way back, how we're shaped and defined by jobs and the lack of them."

Carter thought he stood little chance of winning against competition he considered to be well-known and formidable. That made it that much more of a surprise to hear his name called out for the award.

"It was so unexpected," he said. "I did not think it was going to be me."

Still, he would not yet include himself in the same class as his fellow finalists, all of whom belong in the state's top echelon of poets.

"I was born and raised in Oregon," he said while en route to go celebrate with friends. "I suppose you can call me an Oregon writer, but I'm not part of the circle of Oregon writers yet."

Judge Mark Winegardner said Lopez's "Resistance" (Alfred A. Knopf) "shows him striving to do something new, something risky. It's recognizably a Lopez book (cause for celebration) and at the same time manages to be unlike anything I've read in years (cause for further celebration)."

Lopez, who won a 1987 Oregon Book Award for "Arctic Dreams," was out of the state Friday night.

Other winners from around the state included:

Marc Acito of Portland, who won the Ken Kesey Award for the Novel for "How I Paid for College" (Broadway Books).

Kathleen Dean Moore of Corvallis, who won the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction for "The Pine Island Paradox" (Milkweed Editions).

Henry Sayre of Bend won the Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children's Literature for "Cave Paintings to Picasso" (Chronicle Books).

Barbara LaMorticella of Portland won the Stewart H. Holbrook Award for Outstanding Contributions to Oregon's Literary Life for her activism in Oregon's literary world since the mid-1970s. She co-hosts "The Talking Earth," a KBOO radio program that has brought hundreds of Oregon and national poets to the airwaves.

Carol Brown of Corvallis won the Walt Morey Special Award for Contributions to Young Readers Literature for her work with the Oregon Reading Association, Oregon Council of Teachers of English, Mid-Valley Reading Council and other groups.

CAPTION(S):

Marolyn Tarrant of Corvallis (center) is shown with her son, Bob, columnist for The Register- Guard, and her daughter, Linda Crew of Corvallis. Tarrant's children were both finalists for Oregon Book Awards. Crew won her category. Paul Carter / The Register-Guard