When young people read or hear stories in the classroom, their interest is easily peaked. However, sustaining that interest and attention through a related social studies lesson is more of a challenge. Instructional approaches that enrich the context of stories and forge students' connections with the characters extend learning in meaningful ways. New digital tools offer teachers opportunities to simultaneously foster spatial intelligence while nurturing children's sense of wonder about place and location. One English teacher, Jerome Burg, allowed his secondary students to become immersed in the literary adventures of the characters by using Google Earth and other integrated web-based resources. Burg termed these literary explorations "Lit-Trips." He created a Google Lit Trips website (www.googlelittrips.org/), which provides free access to pre-made Lit Trips for a range of books relevant to different subjects and grade levels. Additionally, the website offers resources to guide teachers in designing their own Lit Trips, as well as structure learning experiences that combine digital mapping tools with the study of novels to enrich connections to literature as well as geographic content. Students become deeply immersed in stories and their related social studies content with Lit Trips, which enable the hands-on explorations of text, by incorporating digital mapping tools, videos, and photographs. (Contains 4 notes.)