The Busload of Books Tour is about to begin. In service of our mission, we’ll be traveling through all fifty states in the year ahead. We’ll visit state parks and national monuments, roadside attractions and hole-in-the wall eateries. From the Black Hills (South...
In Which Our Bus Is Nearly Packed and Our Hearts Are Full of Gratitude
We embark on the Tour one week from today. As I contemplate our pending departure, I alternate between bursts of excitement, fits of panic, and passages of restorative gratitude. Robbi and I have dreamed on this project for more than a decade but never thought we’d be...
In Which Generosity Abounds and Robbi Plans a Return to Her Roots
We're thrilled to announce that we’ll be doing an author/illustrator visit and all-school, hardcover book giveaway at Chestertown’s own HH Garnet Elementary School on April 29th! Garnet was Robbi’s elementary school—and it’s the school Alden and Kato attended, Augie...
New Year’s Eve and Gratitude
As 2021 comes to an end, we want to say thanks to each and every once of you (800+ people, and counting) who've contributed to the Busload of Books Tour. Thanks to you, we’ll be bringing our books and assemblies to 25,000 students and teachers in every US state (and...
Announcing the Telethon
We are pleased to announce the Busload of Books Tour Double Your Dollars 12-Hour Telethon Extravaganza! Join us the Saturday after Thanksgiving from 9am - 9pm ET for an action-packed lineup of hijinks, capers, pageantry, cooking lessons, and extremely special guests....
The Grant That Started It All
Here’s the story of the act of generosity that made the Busload of Books tour possible. One afternoon a few years ago, my phone rang out of the blue. It was our friend DJ calling with an offer that would change our lives. He and his wife Devika wanted to give us a...
Robbi’s Take on the “Why” Behind the Bus Tour
When Matthew and I started out making books together, it was pretty much entirely selfishly motivated. We had an itch to scratch, and we really enjoyed putting his words and my pictures together. It was fun, really, and who doesn't like to have fun? And so we...
How We Got the Idea for the Tour
People have been asking how we got the idea for the Busload of Books tour. Here’s some background. When The Real McCoys came out a few years ago, Robbi and I started getting invited to do author visits at elementary schools. It was the best! We’d do assemblies and...
Busload of Books Tour Promo Video
As you might have already heard, we have a big adventure ahead. So big, that we created this video to tell you all about it and to give you an easy way to share it with friends, your colleagues, your cousin, your other cousin, your hairdresser, your third-grade...
Tour Announcement Recap
IN CASE YOU MISSED LAST NIGHT’S ANNOUNCEMENT, HERE’S THE RECAP: Our family will be spending the 2022-2023 school year traveling the country in a tiny home school bus, visiting Title I elementary schools in all 50 states, doing assemblies on creativity and...
Announcing the Busload of Books Tour!
We (and the kids) are going to spend the 2022-2023 school year on the ultimate road trip— living in a tiny home school bus, visiting Title I elementary schools in all 50 states, doing presentations on creativity and collaboration, and handing out 25,000 free books to...
The Busload of Books Tour is a year-long project to promote literacy and raise awareness of the challenges facing our nation’s public schools.

Author/illustrator duo Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr (that’s us) and our four kids will spend the 2022-2023 school year traveling the country in a school bus/tiny home, visiting Title I schools in all 50 states (plus DC), and giving away 25,000 hardcover books to students and teachers from underserved communities.

As we travel, we will be blogging, vlogging and posting frequently to social media. All of our content will be appropriate for bringing families and students along on our ultimate road trip.
The latest on Instagram:
According to Goji, it’s Bring Your Dog to Work Day. He’s trying so hard, but his stories are dull, with tedious descriptions of sniffing and snorting, endless dull stretches of napping, and inevitably concluding with the protagonist consuming large bowls of tasteless brown nuggets with reckless disregard for common politeness or personal well-being. Also, he’s terrible at typing.