On Monday, we visited L.B. Williams Elementary School in Mitchell, South Dakota. Among all the schools in South Dakota, we chose L.B. Williams, in no small part because of the graciousness of our host, Deb Bartscher. At the end of a compelling essay about what our...
In Which We Determine That Every School Should Have a Kindness Club
On Monday, we visited Barnes County North, a preK-12 school serving nine towns in Barnes County, North Dakota. We thought it strange when we crossed the county line about an hour before we arrived but later learned from our host, librarian Beth Undem, that the county...
In Which Snow Is Falling and the Day Is Cold But Our Hearts Are Warm
Robbi planned our tour route to avoid cold weather, and especially snow. The bus isn’t insulated and there are six external mirrors to defrost. Minnesota didn’t get the memo. We woke to snow and cold on the morning of our visit to Garden City Elementary. Our host,...
In Which We Spend a Day (and a Night) as Part of the Ludlow Elementary School Family
Last week’s visit to Ludlow Elementary began the night before we arrived at the school. Our host, grade four teacher Lisa Marks, invited us to spend the evening (and night) at her home. Lisa’s family made us a delicious dinner (and breakfast), gave us a place to plug...
In Which We Spend a Wonderful Afternoon at Rock Hall Elementary School
Last Thursday we spent the afternoon with the students and teachers of Rock Hall Elementary School. They had used their Title I funding to purchase a hardcover book for each student and teacher. Robbi and I talked observation and storytelling with a group of preK–1st...
Our Visit to Garnet Elementary
Here's the Daily Minute for April 29, 2022 Today we spent the day at Garnet Elementary School, where Robbi spent her elementary years, Alden and Kato are recent graduates, and Augie is currently a fourth grader, We had breakfast with the pre-K kids, talked about...
In Which Generosity and Books Make a Powerful Team
These boxes contain 222 hardcover copies of Ben Yokoyama and the Cookie of Doom. They will be donated to the 2nd-5th graders of HH Garnet Elementary School this coming Friday when Robbi and I visit the school to talk about our books and how we work together to make...
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...
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.