Road Trip!: Camping with the Four Vagabonds: Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs

by Claudia Friddell, Jeremy Holmes (Illustrator)

Overview

Join Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs on their pioneering camping trips during the early 1900s in this energetic and entertaining nonfiction picture-book adventure.

After years of inventing things that other people needed, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford realized there was something they needed—a vacation! So, the famous inventors packed up Ford's Model T and invited their good friends Harvey Firestone and John Burroughs to join them as "the Four Vagabonds" hit America's back roads to enjoy the country's natural beauty, fireside chats, and frolicking fun with friends—all while inspiring future generations to invent camping adventures of their own.

“Buckle yourself in as Claudia Friddell and Jeremy Holmes take you on a fun, creative, and certainly unique road trip with America’s most famous vagabonds—Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs. The colorful and spirited illustrations, the stories of the Vagabond’s bivouacking travels and campsite escapades, and the well-researched bibliography makes Road Trip! a great addition to any child’s library!” —Matt Andres, curatorial registrar, Edison and Ford Winter Estates

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684372720
Publisher:	Astra Publishing House
Publication date:	10/11/2022
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	9.31(w) x 11.31(h) x 0.33(d)
Lexile:	890L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

For children’s author Claudia Friddell, the next best thing to time travel is discovering and sharing exciting real life stories from long ago.  A former elementary school teacher, Claudia loves talking to students and teachers about the magic of bringing history to life through books. When she’s not visiting schools, digging for treasure in the library, or writing at her home in Baltimore, she’s reading, walking, and kayaking on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Visit claudiafriddell.com.

Jeremy Holmes is an internationally renowned children's book illustrator, whose work has received numerous awards and starred reviews from critics. He won the prestigious Bologna Ragazzi Opera Prima Award (2010) for his debut book There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. Visit jeremyholmesstudio.com.

Editorial Reviews

Texas Library Association Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List

★  "An entertaining and informative picture book describing the camping adventures of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John Burroughs, and Harvey Firestone....This is a dynamic and engaging book to complement units on inventors, nature, and camping. It is sure to spark further exploration of these famous men in history, and presents quite a contrast with what young people know of today’s founders and start-up entrepreneurs." —School Library Journal, starred review

“Buckle yourself in as Claudia Friddell and Jeremy Holmes take you on a fun, creative, and certainly unique road trip with America’s most famous vagabonds—Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs. The colorful and spirited illustrations, the stories of the Vagabond’s bivouacking travels and campsite escapades, and the well-researched bibliography makes Road Trip! a great addition to any child’s library!” —Matt Andres, curatorial registrar, Edison and Ford Winter Estates

"Three titans of industry (and one writer) rough it... illustrations in a muted palette, reminiscent of sepia films highlighted with green and orange, help make this feel like an old-timey film. [C]hildren, especially those with an interest in history, will get a kick out of this lighthearted but informational text." —Kirkus Reviews

“(Y)ounger readers will enjoy Friddell’s sprightly account of how an American supergroup—Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone (think: tires), and nature writer John Burroughs, with occasional hangers-on like (wait for it) Warren G. Harding—got together for a series of annual tours from 1914 on that took them from the Everglades to the California coast. In stylized illustrations, Holmes kits out his otherwise recognizable figures in pale faces with cheek spots, like mimes, and poses them, sometimes comically, in settings ranging from elaborately detailed workshops to spacious outdoor scenes… the book presents a colorful bit of Americana.”—Booklist

From the Publisher

★ 10/01/2022

Gr 3–6—An entertaining and informative picture book describing the camping adventures of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, John Burroughs, and Harvey Firestone. These famous men formed a friendship and shared a great love of the outdoors, calling themselves the Four Vagabonds. Their famous road trips inspired other Americans to discover the treasures in nature with a then new favorite pastime—recreational camping. The illustrations are bright and detailed with humorous speech bubbles in some panels and the four friends depicted as amusing caricatures. The afterword includes a detailed history of these four fellows, where they traveled, and why their adventures eventually came to an end. There are also photographs of the camping trips, their firsthand accounts, as well as accounts from some of the people they met on their trips. A detailed resource list is included for further research. VERDICT This is a dynamic and engaging book to complement units on inventors, nature, and camping. It is sure to spark further exploration of these famous men in history, and presents quite a contrast with what young people know of today's founders and start-up entrepreneurs.—Heidi Dechief

School Library Journal

2022-08-31
Three titans of industry (and one writer) rough it.

Inventor Thomas Edison and car manufacturer Henry Ford are tired from their jobs making “life easier for others.” They decide to go on vacation and motor off to explore the country in one of Ford’s Model T’s. They invite along their friend nature writer John Burroughs; the next summer, Ford and Edison take another trip, this time with tire kingpin Harvey Firestone. Finally, all four of them decide to travel together, and the foursome innovate the road trip. The book describes the places they visited, the activities they enjoyed, and how these stuffy old figures from history “acted more like kids at camp than men on vacation.” Busy illustrations in a muted palette, reminiscent of sepia films highlighted with green and orange, help make this feel like an old-timey movie. While some children, especially those with an interest in history, will get a kick out of this lighthearted but informational text, the niche topic will limit its audience. Furthermore, the overall cheerful tone means that Henry Ford—an outspoken Nazi sympathizer admired greatly by Adolf Hitler—comes off as a peculiar but lovable gentleman, a complicated authorial choice. Extensive backmatter includes photographs, a map, and further anecdotes from the foursome’s joint vacations, which stretched over a decade. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

This car-centered history lesson is a lemon. (afterword, bibliography, further resources, photo credits) (Informational picture book. 5-9)

Kirkus Reviews