The Pitt Wheres Charon

A Summertime Adventure

For me, August always means the dog days of summer, when the wonderfulness that is a long vacation (if you're lucky enough to be enjoying one) clashes with a heat and stickiness that can give you both a headache and an unnatural longing for Popsicles. August is yellow, in all its good and bad, but at least it's not September, which is school.

So what to do about August? Leave home! Of course this should be done in the most mature and responsible manner possible (blah blah blah), but just go. If you want a model for the right way to see the world, then reach for Casey Scieszka and Steve Weinberg's illustrated memoir of their journeys to nine countries, To Timbuktu: Nine Countries, Two People, One True Story . After an introduction that explains how they met and became a couple, Scieszka writes about their plan to live and work in China and Mali while also traveling through France, Morocco, Dubai, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Burkina Faso (in West Africa). The book chronicles their jobs as English language teachers in Bejing, their subsequent touring though Southeast Asia, and ultimate arrival in Mali, where Scieszka had funding from a Fulbright grant to study the role of Islam in the education system. To Timbuktu teen-friendly. (I think illustrations of some kind should be mandatory in any travel title.) Weinberg is especially talented at capturing facial expressions. (He has a long career ahead of him in graphic novels -- Oni Press or Fantagraphics needs to sign this guy up pronto.) Scieszka has chosen to share not only her personal reflections on their travels but also how the couple worked through their personal struggles with their need to write and create art while also earning money. These are age-old dramas and completely identifiable by most readers, even though their moments occurred in a small Bejing apartment or the desert outside of Timbuktu.