Are We There Yet?: The First Road Trip Across the USA

Ages 4 to 8, Grades P to 3

Hitch a ride on the first road trip across the United States of America in this rollicking nonfiction picture book from Ezra Jack Keats Honor winner Stacy McAnulty and New York Times bestselling illustrator Elizabeth Baddeley!

It’s 1903 when Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson bets fifty dollars that he can drive a horseless carriage (a car) across the USA, from California to New York, in less than three months. Considering Dr. Jackson doesn’t know how to drive, there are no highways yet, and everyone else who’s tried the trip has failed, the odds are stacked against him. Still, he hires a bike racer to act as mechanic, and the two set off in Dr. Jackson’s car, the Vermont, with their team mascot, Bud the bulldog.

Their trip is far from easy street. The duo must pull the car across streams, drive through deep mud and over rocky terrain, and wait for a stagecoach to bring spare parts. And with no windshield, doors, or a roof, every bump in the road means boingy boingy boingy—until things bounce right out of the car!

Then two more teams start out from California, and the race is on! Can a doctor, a bike racer, and a bulldog make it across the finish line first?

About the Author

Stacy McAnulty is a mechanical engineer turned children’s book author who dreams of someday being a dog therapist, a correspondent for The Daily Show, an astronaut, or a Green Bay Packers coach. She’s the author of the chapter book series The Dino Files and Goldie Blox, the bestselling middle grade novel The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, and picture books including Are We There Yet? illustrated by Elizabeth Baddeley and Excellent Ed illustrated by Julia Sarcone-Roach, which won an Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Honor. When not writing, Stacy likes to listen to NPR, bake triple-chocolate cupcakes, and eat triple-chocolate cupcakes. Originally from upstate New York, she now lives in Kernersville, North Carolina, with her three kids, three dogs, and one husband.

Elizabeth Baddeley is the illustrator of the critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsberg Makes Her Mark, written by Debbie Levy. She also illustrated A Woman in the House (and Senate): How Women Came to the United States Congress, Broke Down Barriers, and Changed the Country; The Good Fight: The Feuds of the Founding Fathers (and How They Shaped the Nation); An Inconvenient Alphabet; and Are We There Yet?. Elizabeth graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York City with a degree in illustration and currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri. Learn more at EBaddeley.com.