Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
The House of the Scorpion is a major award winner. It picked up a National Book award and it was a Newbery Honor book, just to name a couple. (Source.)
Nancy Farmer's novel was actually supposed to have fifty more pages and some swear words. But, because, she wanted it to be a Young Adult novel, she had to shorten it and cut out some of the more adult passages at her publisher's insistence. (Source.)
The author grew up in Arizona and she used the landscape of her youth as the setting for The House of the Scorpion. No wonder it's so darn dry. (Source.)