
Hello Wonderful Title I Educators!
Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr here—author/illustrator, husband/wife creators of picture books and illustrated middle grade novels.

We’re spending the 2022-2023 school year traveling the country in our tiny home school bus, visiting Title I schools in all 50 states on the Busload of Books Tour.
We wish we could visit your school in person, and perhaps we will someday, but for now we’re offering the next-best thing—FREE ACCESS (for Title I educators) to videos of our Tour presentations, drawing demos, and supporting educational materials for all elementary ages.
The presentations are funny, high-energy, and supported by more than 100 illustrations, photos, and animations. We hope they might bring a bit of fun, laughter, and creative spark to your classrooms and community.
(or read on to learn more about our presentations)

(click HERE if you have already received your access password but have lost track of the link)
Presentation for Pre-K – 1st Grade
That Full Moon Feeling
Finding the Wonder and Telling Your Story

Supporting materials prompt students to create and share their own stories—and a drawing demo teaches them how to draw a bear!
Presentation for 2nd – 6th Grade
Bulldozers in the Fog
The Power of Creative Expression

Supporting activities challenge students to match proverbs with their meanings—and a drawing demo teaches them how to draw Dumbles the Dog!




To access this free content, fill out the form below, and confirm you work for a Title I-eligible school. Once you submit the form, you’ll receive an email with a password and a URL that will lead you to the content!
Note: These materials are for Title I educators only to share within their Title I communities. Like most creators, we can’t usually offer free access to our presentations, as school visits provide an essential source of income while giving students an invaluable opportunity to interact with us in person. But we’re aware that many schools – including most receiving Title I funding – are unable to afford author visits. For that reason, we’re extending the benefits of the Tour to more schools by providing this free content for Title I educators to share with their classrooms and communities. All others should click HERE to learn more about paid in-person or virtual visits or workshops.




The Ultimate Virtual Field Trip
We invite you to join us for a virtual tour of America’s unsung wonders and off-the-beaten-path communities. At every step, we’ll be documenting our travels via daily photos, essays, sketches, and videos. Check out our route!
To join the adventure, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or the tour blog.

Busload of Books Research Project
We’re partnering with the departments of education and sociology at Washington College to conduct the first-ever, large-scale study of how author/illustrator visits impact attitudes about literacy and creativity among elementary school students. The resulting data will fill a critical gap in the research on this topic—and could provide powerful tools for school administrators and teachers trying to secure funding and priority for literacy programming.

We’re partnering with a national nonprofit, a leading liberal arts college, a beloved local arts organization, and our generous publisher.
FIRST BOOK
helped us identify the schools we’ll visit—and is working with our publishers to get our books to students and teachers.
WASHINGTON COLLEGE
is using our tour to conduct a major study that will fill a critical gap in the research on the impact of author/illustrator visits.
KENT CULTURAL ALLIANCE
is filling our bus with hometown pride and accepting tax-deductible donations on our behalf.
RANDOM HOUSE
is helping with publicity and making a major donation of books.
FIRST BOOK
helped us identify the schools we’ll visit—and is working with our publishers to get our books to students and teachers.
WASHINGTON COLLEGE
is using our tour to conduct a major study that will fill a critical gap in the research on the impact of author/illustrator visits.
KENT CULTURAL ALLIANCE
is filling our bus with hometown pride and accepting tax-deductible donations on our behalf.


Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr are the author and illustrator of the Cookie Chronicles series, The Real McCoys trilogy, and the picture books Sunrise Summer, Babies Ruin Everything, and Everywhere, Wonder. When not advocating for local schools, giving talks on creativity, or commercial salmon fishing in Alaska, they live in the hayloft of an old barn on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Read more about us
in the Washington Post!

MATTHEW
Author, Dad,
Tundra Nanny

ROBBI
Illustrator, Mom,
Fisherwoman

ALDEN (13)
Actor, Artist, Entrepreneur

KATO (12)
Athlete, Gamer,
Engineer

AUGUST (10)
All-star Hugger,
Magical Being

JASPER (5)
Shouter, Jester,
Autocrat

DUMBLES (1)
Snuffler, Mooch,
Grumpy Old Man
PRINT MEDIA
WASHINGTON POST 2019
An in-depth profile of our journey from independent publishers to commercial children’s book creators. Click here to read.
WASHINGTON POST 2021
The wonderful Mary Quattlebaum writes about the launch of The Cookie of Perfection and the Busload of Books Tour here.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The official book-world announcement of the Busload of Books Tour is here.
WE NEED DIVERSE BOOKS
A conversation about how illustration can be a form of authorship—and a tool for increasing representation in kid lit. Click here to read.
RELUCTANT READER BOOKS
Our favorite-ever review of The Cookie Chronicles—and why these books are a good match for readers trying to find their footing. Read it here.
FAMILY CIRCLE
The Modern Life column profiled our family and the “joys and challenges of raising kids while working from home” here.
NEW YORK TIMES
An interview with the ArtsBeats blog about our indie press Idiots’Books. Read it here.
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
Classified our self-published work in the “Brilliant and Lowbrow” quadrant of their Approval Matrix. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Check it out here.
SELECT PODCASTS
HELLO MONDAY
We join LinkedIn’s Jessi Hempel for a conversation about leaving our day jobs to make books and kids. Listen here.
END BOOK DESERTS
We talk with teacher, scholar, author, and literacy advocate Molly Ness about the Busload of Books Tour here.
THE AUTONOMOUS CREATIVE PODCAST
Our conversation with comic artist Jessica Abel about risk, reward, and making your own luck can be found here.
THE AUTONOMOUS CREATIVE - with video!
Our conversation with comic artist Jessica Abel about risk, reward, and making your own luck. The crowdcast can be found here.

The latest on Instagram:
Good night from Milford State Park in Milford, Kansas, where we were not planning to sleep tonight.
We started the day in Oklahoma and loafed a while before driving north to Tanganyika, an interactive wildlife park in Goddard, Kansas. We fed romaine to giraffes, tortoises, and guinea pigs, little tubs of milky fluid to lorikeets, and craisins to lemurs. We pet kangaroos (who were surprisingly chill). Kato fell in love with the lorikeets and Augie with the guinea pigs. I’m guessing there will be another power point presentation in my future.
Afterward, we drove to Wichita and found a grocery store. The kids stayed in the bus to do their homework, and Robbi and I spent a few minutes strolling the aisles, totally alone except for the other hundred or so people in the store. It was the closest thing we’ve had to a date in a while. We were hungry and probably bought more food than we needed, including an inadvisable box of Peeps-flavored cereal.
Then we drove two hours to our next campsite, a lovely spot on the banks of a lake, where we parked and set up camp only to discover the bathrooms were locked for the “off season.” The “off season” ends in two days, but Robbi couldn’t wait that long. She scowled profoundly by the lakeside as I packed up the bus for departure. She consulted the Google and found a new park an hour down the road.
On this drive, I made a terrible error, opening my driver window at the wrong moment and creating a draft that blew my favorite lei from Hawaii out the window. I despaired, but Robbi did not. We turned around, found my lei, and rejoiced as the sun set.
Then we drove another hour to a new park where we poked around in the dark for a bathroom that worked. The first set of bathrooms we found was also locked, but we persisted and finally found a set with doors that actually opened. More rejoicing transpired.
Now we are parked and Dumbles is getting his frisk on. Robbi is making a salad, and soon we will all pile onto the mattress on the back and watch TV.
It’s good to be back in Kansas, where I lived from sixth grade through the end of high school. Stay tuned for blasts from my past.
#busloadofbooks
Good night from Coon Creek Cove in Newkirk, Oklahoma. Some days we wake up with a clear sense of what’s going to happen and other days we’re utterly surprised as weather shifts or opportunities present themselves.
Today was some of both. We spent much of the day at Olive Elementary, hosted by librarian Barbara Smythe. It’s a day we’ve been anticipating for 18 months, and it was just as fun as we’d hoped. We’ll tell you all about it soon.
What surprised us was what Barbara said as we were leaving. In addition to being a librarian, STEM teacher, and mother of four, she’s a volunteer firefighter and wondered if we might want to tour the fire station on our way out of town.
We nodded enthusiastically and Barbara called the chief to set up a tour. As it turns out, the chief was her husband Tim, who has recently taken over for his dad who had been chief for forty years prior.
Tim couldn’t have been more gracious or warm. He spent almost two hours showing us the various trucks, opening every compartment, demonstrating where the various hoses, ladders, tanks, and tools are stored and how they’re used. He let us sit in the cab, turned on the sirens, and gave us a demo of the heat sensors the firefighters use to find people or animals during a search and rescue.
All of the vehicles are customized to the specific needs of Tim’s community. In addition to two decommissioned military trucks Tim has converted into 2,500-gallon tankers, there’s a fleet of pickups set up to combat brush fires, which are the most common call for the Freedom Hill Station.
Tim showed us the office, the classroom where he runs trainings for firefighters from other towns, and the bank of lockers where the firefighters have their coats, pants, and boots carefully hung and folded for easy access at a moment’s notice.
I’d never known how much goes into setting up and running a fire station. It was incredible to hear someone so knowledgeable walk us through how everything works. Thank goodness there are people like Tim and Barbara willing to devote so much time and energy for the good of their communities. It was an honor to meet them both today.
#busloadofbooks