Road Trip!

Texas Library Association Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List

★  ”An entertaining and informative picture book describing the camping adventures of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John Burroughs, and Harvey Firestone….This is a dynamic and engaging book to complement units on inventors, nature, and camping. It is sure to spark further exploration of these famous men in history, and presents quite a contrast with what young people know of today’s founders and start-up entrepreneurs.” —School Library Journal, starred review

“Buckle yourself in as Claudia Friddell and Jeremy Holmes take you on a fun, creative, and certainly unique road trip with America’s most famous vagabonds—Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs. The colorful and spirited illustrations, the stories of the Vagabond’s bivouacking travels and campsite escapades, and the well-researched bibliography makes Road Trip! a great addition to any child’s library!” —Matt Andres, curatorial registrar, Edison and Ford Winter Estates

“Three titans of industry (and one writer) rough it… illustrations in a muted palette, reminiscent of sepia films highlighted with green and orange, help make this feel like an old-timey film. [C]hildren, especially those with an interest in history, will get a kick out of this lighthearted but informational text.” —Kirkus Reviews

“(Y)ounger readers will enjoy Friddell’s sprightly account of how an American supergroup—Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone (think: tires), and nature writer John Burroughs, with occasional hangers-on like (wait for it) Warren G. Harding—got together for a series of annual tours from 1914 on that took them from the Everglades to the California coast. In stylized illustrations, Holmes kits out his otherwise recognizable figures in pale faces with cheek spots, like mimes, and poses them, sometimes comically, in settings ranging from elaborately detailed workshops to spacious outdoor scenes… the book presents a colorful bit of Americana.”—Booklist