After twelve years of dreaming and three years of planning and and more than a thousand generous contributors chipping in to make it possible, we’re hitting the road today with 25,000 books to give away and 25,000 miles to drive. (There’s a symmetry to it.)

We’ve purchased a bus and made it a home. We’ve built partnerships that deepen our impact and widen our reach. We’ve packed as well as we can, but what do we know about the road ahead? Not much. We’re mostly unprepared, and we know it.

But momentum is a powerful force. We’ve made a plan and aim to see it through.

Over the next twelve months we will:

• Give presentations on creative empowerment at high-need elementary schools in every state
• Distribute 150,000 books to students and educators from low-income communities (in partnership with First Book and Build-A-Bear Foundation)
• Facilitate the first-ever, large-scale study on the impact of author visits (in partnership with Washington College)s
• Offer video-based versions of our Tour presentations to any Title I educator
• Bring friends and followers along on the ultimate virtual road trip
• Ask the same three questions wherever we go (and share the answers with you)
• Attempt to make a book(s) about our travels and discoveries
• Camp in driveways, campgrounds, parking lots, and public land
• Homeschool our kids (14,12,10, and 5)
• Encounter an unfathomable number of bathrooms

This is what we plan to do, but what will actually happen? What will go spectacularly wrong? What will go unexpectedly right? What new friends will be meet? What lessons will we learn? What blind spots will we discover? Will we make a difference? What would that even look like?

So many questions. We could sit here asking them forever. It’s time to go find answers.

Please join us, friends. A new school year begins. A country awaits.

We’re packed. The tank is full. Whatever we’ve forgotten, we’ll collect along the way.

We’ll never be completely ready, so we might as well begin.

Here we go.