Road Trip

The Book of the Week for week 38 is titled Road Trip. 

The book is made as a carousel book, with five concave shaped pages that open into a round book similar to an old fashioned merry-go-round. There are Vee fold pop-outs attached to each page that serve as a roof and floor.

The pages are connected in an accordion style so they resemble a zigzag. Carousel books may have many layers of smaller and smaller accordion folded strips of pages nested inside the outer ones. This book has two accordion strips which are sewn together with a pamphlet stitch at each mountain fold (where the blue paper strips are glued).

Accordion style pages pulled out in a straight line

Each page is an illustration of something that might be experienced on a road trip. Page One: long hours spent in a tiny space... the anxiety of unexpected car issues...or humming along to rocking music and a gorgeous blue sky!

Page One

Page Three: the magic of the unexpected... coming across a roadside attraction such as a county fair or a waterfall.. or anything! Have you ever experienced that on a road trip? If you didn't stop, don't you wish you had?

A Carousel in a carousel book

And there's the excitement of maneuvering in city traffic!!!! I avoid it if possible, but not always. I remember an afternoon driving the streets of downtown Pittsburg, PA.. Fifth Avenue, then Forbes, then back on Fifth... again and again!

Welcome to Pittsburgh!

A road trip these days has the ubiquitous voice of the GPS.. but in the old days folks used MAPS. The interior of cars were stuffed with them.. and they never could be folded back to the original position unless one had a graduate degree in something like physics. I've gathered up some of mine to cover the back of the book.

   The idea of a road trip takes the imagination to unknown vistas. A road trip with friends or family can be a welcomed bonding trek...a delight, a journey of transformation, an experience of a lifetime. Or it can become a dreaded incarceration of relentless annoyance and strife... On the positive side: wide open skies, the delicious aromas of homey diners (with PIE), and stopping to fill the tank at country gas stations and take a break for icy colas and tiny bags of salted peanuts.. was my experience as a child. ...Also there were hours looking at the dash board or back of the seat in front of me, fiddling with the radio trying to avoid the static and the church stations, and hoping I wouldn't get car sick.. the road trips of my childhood consisted of being crammed in the back seat between two older brothers whose favorite travel game was annoying me to fits of tears and temper.. as our parents smoked like chimneys in the front seat and ignored us. My sister-in-law used to toss empty drink cups at her six feuding children happily running amok in the back of her cargo-van... My mother-in-law used to pack the station wagon... get all five kids, the tents, and camp gear, and boat gear, and the coolers of beer and food in the car, then burst into tears and swear she wasn't going...every time!

   So every Road Trip has it's own story. If you have a road trip planned, may it be delightful and wondrous....  and if it isn't so perfect... may it be a great story!
Kathy