Are We There Yet?: The First Road Trip Across the USA is not “ha ha” funny, but there is a tone of humor to the storytelling of Stacy McAnulty and illustrator Elizabeth Baddeley’s book. Maybe it is because I like a good yarn, a good road trip and have an odd sense of humor. But regardless of my thoughts of humor, this is one of my favorite books I read this month (and due to a recent vacation, I had a lot of books read). Plus, I can get behind a Canadian born-Vermont boy showing the world what he was made of.
It is a currently available picture book that I read via an online reader copy. We get the tires popping, the horse-drawn stagecoach delivering parts, the mud, the rivers, the missing pens, food, money and even a doggie. There are people who thought this was an act in the circus and so much more. The ins and outs of a trip that started out as a bet and then turned into history are wonderfully presented.
The images are busy, multiple panels per page. There are a lot of fun, little, and big parts all coming together. The colors set a tone of the era (early 1900s) and are more earthy-toned and still colorful and bright. They are just as important to the story as the busy and plentiful text. Read the text and you get half the story. Read the illustrations and you get the other half of things. This is a big picture packaged deal.