Young Adult Road Trip Books

As we are all hiding indoors because of the cold weather it is a perfect time to read something different. In particular, I think it is a great time to read about road trips and grand adventures that we could only hope to take once the thaw comes. Here are some of the best young adult books about road trips that I have seen in the last year or so. Readers that just happen to be a decade (or more) past the ‘young adult’ years (like myself) should not be afraid to venture into the teen stacks to pick one of these up. You will thank us later.

Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest by A. Lee Martinez.
On a road trip across an enchanted America, Helen and Troy will discover all this and more. If the curse placed upon them by an ancient god doesn’t kill them or the pack of reluctant orc assassins don’t catch up to them, Helen and Troy might reach the end their journey in one piece, where they might just end up destroying the world. Or at least a state or two. A minotaur girl, an all-American boy, a three-legged dog, and a classic car are on the road to adventure, where every exit leads to adventure.

Finding Somewhere by Joseph Monninger
Sixteen-year-old Hattie and eighteen-year-old Delores set off on a road trip that takes unexpected turns as they discover the healing power of friendship and confront what each of them is fleeing from.

Chasing the Skip by Janci Patterson.
When fifteen-year-old Rick’s mother finally leaves for good, Ricki’s absentee father steps in, taking Ricki with him as he chases bail “skips” across the country, but their fledgling relationship is tested as they pursue attractive, manipulative, seventeen-year-old Ian Burnham.

How my Summer Went up in Flames by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski.
Placed under a temporary restraining order for torching her former boyfriend’s car, seventeen-year-old Rosie embarks on a cross-country car trip from New Jersey to Arizona while waiting for her court appearance.

Reunited by Hilary Weisman Graham.
Alice, Summer, and Tiernan were best friends who broke up at the same time as their favorite band, but four years later, just before they are preparing to go off to college, the girls reluctantly come back together, each with her own motives, for a road trip from Massachusetts to Austin, Texas, for the band’s one-time-only reunion concert.

Of course I cannot end a list at just five, so here are some more great young adult books about amazing road trips.  Going Bovine by Libba Bray, In Honor by Jessi Kirby, Perfect Escape by Jennifer Brown, Paper Towns by John Green, Catch and Release by Blythe Woolstone,
The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour, Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson, 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson, Saving June by Hannah Harrington, Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard, and Rules of the Road by Joan Bauer.

Book Club Picks – Humor

smileIs your book club looking for some titles to cheer them up during the dreary winter season?  Here are a few titles they might enjoy reading.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion – Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially challenged professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. And so, in the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers.

Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple – Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Little Bitty Lies by Mary Kay Andrews –  A tantalizing tale about an abandoned Atlanta housewife and mother who tells one tiny white lie that sets her world spiraling outrageously out of control.

Very Valentineby Adriana Trigiani – The adventures of an extraordinary and unforgettable woman as she attempts to rescue her family’s struggling shoe business and find love at the same time.

Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boyby Helen Fielding –  Bridget Jones stumbles through the challenges of loss, single motherhood, tweeting, texting, technology, and rediscovering her sexuality in—Warning! Bad, outdated phrase approaching!—middle age.

The Good House by Ann Leary – Hildy Good is a lifelong resident of a small community on the rocky coast of Boston’s North Shore, she knows pretty much everything about everyone.  A successful real-estate broker, mother, and grandmother, her days are full. But her nights have become lonely ever since her daughters, convinced their mother was drinking too much, sent her off to rehab.  Now she’s in recovery—more or less.

Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen – A tale at once fiercely pointed and wickedly funny in which the greedy, the corrupt, and the degraders of what’s left of pristine Florida—now, of the Bahamas as well—get their comeuppance in mordantly ingenious, diabolically entertaining fashion.

Truth In Advertising by John Kennedy – Finbar Dolan is lost and lonely. Except he doesn’t know it. Despite escaping his blue-collar Boston upbringing to carve out a mildly successful career at a Madison Avenue ad agency, he’s a bit of a mess and closing in on forty. He’s recently called off his wedding. Now, a few days before Christmas, he’s forced to cancel a long-postponed vacation in order to write, produce, and edit a Superbowl commercial for his diaper account in record time.

Kind of Kin by Rilla Askew – A funny and poignant novel that explores what happens when upstanding people are pushed too far—and how an ad-hoc family, and ultimately, an entire town, will unite to protect its own.

This Is When I Leave You by Jonathon Tropper – A riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind-whether we like it or not.

Louise Reads: The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Don Tillman, 39 and a professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. His lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not “wired” for romance. Logically, though, he concedes to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner through an exhaustive 16-page survey he has designed to scientifically eliminate all incompatible candidates.

Rosie Jarman would never make it past page one of Don’s survey. A smoking, drinking, disorganized vegetarian, she is completely unsuitable. Yet Don feels somehow compelled to use his expertise in DNA analysis to assist her with a project of her own – identifying her biological father. An unlikely friendship develops between them as they work together on The Father Project.

In The Rosie Project, Don is our narrator, and seeing the story from his point of view is part of the charm of this book. Similar to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night -Time and Silver Linings Playbook, the narrator of this story is wired differently than most people.  To say Don has social difficulties is an understatement.  In an early scene, Don is discussing a lecture he’d recently given at the university:

“Claudia asked whether I’d enjoyed the Asperger’s lecture… [I] told her I had found the subject fascinating. “Did the symptoms remind you of anyone?” she asked.  They certainly did. They were an almost perfect description of Lazlo Hevesi in the Physics department.”
 

Fans of the television series “The Big Bang Theory” may notice some similarities to the character Sheldon Cooper from that show.  For example, in a scene where Don is explaining his scheduled meal system to Rosie after a meeting at a restaurant goes comically awry:

“So you cook this same meal every Tuesday, right?”
“Correct.” I listed the eight major advantages of the Standardized Meal System:
  1. No need to accumulate recipe books.
  2. Standardized shopping list – hence very efficient shopping.
  3. Almost zero waste – nothing in the refrigerator or pantry unless required for one of the recipes.
  4. Diet planned and nutritionally balanced in advance.
  5. No time wasted wondering what to cook.
  6. No mistakes, no unpleasant surprises.
  7. Excellent food, superior to most restaurants at a much lower price (see point 3).
  8. Minimum cognitive load required.

Debut novelist Graeme Simsion has written a warm-hearted, laugh-out-loud funny, and surprisingly poignant story. No huge surprises, The Rosie Project follows many of the tropes that are the stock-in-trade of romantic comedies,  but I was still caught up in the story from the first words and it never lagged or disappointed. A feel-good book that delivered!  Audiobook listeners will enjoy first-time narrator Dan O’Grady’s performance, his Australian accent (the story is set in Melbourne) added an authentic touch.

If you like The Rosie Project, you may also enjoy:

The Big Bang Theory starring Johnny Galecki, Kaley Cuoco, Jim Parsons, Simon Helberg, and Kunal Nayyar

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Great Poetry Books to Share with Children

Do you love poetry and want to inspire the same love in your child, are trying to teach young children to read and write poetry, or simply looking to spark your own enjoyment of the genre. Poetry can seem intimidating at first glance, but knowing where to start, and starting simple, are often a good idea. These books are full of poetry that is suited for all ages, the young and young at heart. So, regardless of the reason you might want to venture into the worlds of poetry, these books are a great place to start.

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  1. Falling Up (or any collections) by Shel Silverstein
  2. The World of Christopher Robin; the Complete When We Were Very Young and Now We are Six by A.A. Milne
  3. A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson
  4. Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
  5. Sad Underwear and Other Complications: More Poems for Children and Their Parents by Judith Viorst
  6. Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer
  7. A Pizza the Size of the Sun by Jack Prelutsky
  8. Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman
  9. Forest Has a Song: Poems by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
  10. A Dazzling Display of Dogs by Betsy Franco
  11. It’s Raining Pigs and Noodles by Jack Prelutsky
  12. Kids Pick The Funniest Poems by Bruce Lansky
  13. The Bill Martin Jr Big Book of Poetry by Bill Martin Jr.

There are, of course, many more fantastic books of poetry and novels in verse out there for us all to enjoy. If you have a favorite that I missed please share it with us in the comments so that others can discover it too!

Books to Read After Wimpy Kid

Are you a fan of Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or know someone that is? Waiting for an author to release another book, or the next movie adaptation of a favorite series, can be frustrating to big fans. Thankfully, there are still plenty of books out there that might make Wimpy Kid fans happy. take a chance with one of these books to satisfy that Wimpy Kid craving.

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda (Origami Yoda #1) by Tom Angleberger
Sixth-grader Tommy and his friends describe their interactions with a paper finger puppet of Yoda, worn by their weird classmate Dwight, as they try to figure out whether or not the puppet can really predict the future. Includes instructions for making Origami Yoda.

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier
Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes is the utterly beguiling tale of a ten-year-old blind orphan who has been schooled in a life of thievery. One fateful afternoon, he steals a box from a mysterious traveling haberdasher that contains three pairs of magical eyes. When he tries the first pair, he is instantly transported to a hidden island where he is presented with a special quest: to travel to the dangerous Vanished Kingdom and rescue a people in need.

Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to Not Reading (Charlie Joe Jackson, #1) by Tommy Greenwald
Middle schooler Charlie Joe is proud of his success at avoiding reading, but eventually his schemes go too far.

NERDS: National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society (NERDS, #1) by Michael Buckley
While running a spy network from their elementary school, five unpopular misfits combine their talents and use cutting-edge gadgetry to fight evil around the world.

The Adventures of Captain Underpants (Captain Underpants, #1) by Dav Pilkey
When George and Harold hypnotize their principal into thinking that he is the superhero Captain Underpants, he leads them to the lair of the nefarious Dr. Diaper, where they must defeat his evil robot henchmen.

Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze by Alan Silberberg
In love with the girl he sneezed on the first day of school and best pals with Marshall, the “One Eyed Jack” of friends, seventh-grader Milo Cruikshank misses his mother whose death has changed everything at home.

You might also want to try: The Accidental Genius of Weasel High by Rick Detorie, The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1) by Rick Riordan, Gossip from the Girls’ Room (Blogtastic!, #1) by Rose Cooper,  Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie,  Zen and the Art of Faking It, or Notes from the Midnight Driver by Jordan Sonnenblick, Horton Halfpott: or, The Fiendish Mystery of Smugwick Manor; or, The Loosening of M’Lady Luggertuck’s Corset by Tom Angleberger,  Horrid Henry (Horrid Henry #1) Francesca Simon, Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson, Into the Wild (Warriors, #1) by Erin Hunter, or Warp Speed by Lisa Yee.