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...
In Which We Set Out to Prove Wonder Really is Everywhere
For the pre-K-1st graders we meet on the Tour, we’ll be giving away a copy of Everywhere, Wonder, our picture about the importance of noticing and appreciating the beautiful and interesting things to be found wherever we go. The point of our school presentation for...
In Which We Spend the Whole Day Painting With Friends, Old and New
Yesterday might have been my favorite day yet in the Busload of Books Tour project so far. We spent the morning at Garnet Elementary, working on the bus mural with students and teachers. Every single fourth and fifth grader got a chance to choose a color and find a...
The Daily Minute: 5.6.22
This is the Daily Minute for May 6, 2022. In which the students of Garnet Elementary are excellent painters and practically waterproof.
Sunrise Summer is a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of 2021
We are excited and honored to see Sunrise Summer on the Bank Street College of Education's 2022 list of Best Children's Books of the Year. If you're looking for a picture book about adventure, self-empowerment, and off-grid living in a far-flung corner of the world,...
In Which Robbi is Not Here But Also Not So Far Away
Robbi is on sabbatical this week. Which mean's she's very busy eating dump cake, sleeping when she needs to, and furiously finishing the final illustrations for Cookie Chronicles 5. Planning the Tour has taken much more time and effort than we’d realized, and we’ve...
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.