We love a good road trip but who knew this was how it began!!! Of course the names in this book are super familiar but I had no idea they were friends. I loved reading about their road trips and their inventions.

Whst a fun book about 4 friends: Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, John Burroughs and Thomas Edison joining together to go on a camping trip. A great storyline and fun illustrations. I think kids will love to read this historical infused book.

What happens when you mix Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, John Burroughs, and a camping trip??? The historic road trip of a lifetime! This colorful picture book follows the true story of these four adventurers as they embark on a series of camping trips around the U.S. What will they see and who will they invite next?
The story is easy to follow and the illustrations are whimsical and inviting. While the picture book was cute, my favorite part of Road Trip was the additional information at the end. I love books that introduce the topic for younger children, but provide resources for older children to discover and research more. Road Trip includes two pages of background information about this unlikely friendship and their adventures, two pages of original photographs with captions, a selected bibliography, a list of sources for further study, and more! This book would make a great introduction to unit studies about U.S. geography or any of these men and their place in history.

*Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.

Originally, I wanted to read this for the cover, but this book needs to be read because it’s fantastic. This is a true story of four very famous people: Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs. They went camping together and there are pictures and home movies of their wild adventures. I love a book that teaches me something I did not know, and this fits that bill perfectly. What I think is the best thing about this book or the illustrations. They feel old timey, like 1920s, but they are so vibrant and colorful and wonderfully odd that children cannot resist picking up this book and flipping through the pages.

This was a great nonfiction text about the United States, inventions, innovators, and friendship. My students will love the photographs and the illustrations as well as the fun stories about the road trip. The information at the back of the book allows students to dig deeper into the text. Thank you #netgalley for giving me a copy of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC to review.

A look at four men (Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs), inventors, poets, businessmen, and friends. Their escapades contributed to the popularization of camping.

The illustrations are crisp and whimsical, and probably my favorite part. Coming in a close second would be the extensive back matter and bonus information. The story itself ranges from the habits of the men to their relationship to their love of nature.

This book tells how three businessmen and a naturalist--the well known Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs took yearly road trips between the years 1918 and 1924. Over time, the cars they traveled in became more complex and there were more and more cars. The men got out of their labs and offices and into the natural world, having lots of adventures and enjoying the companionship. I like that the book shows a new and different picture of these men and also documents how the trips changed over time. The text is easy to follow and the illustrations are interesting and add different information from the written text. This book shares a unique side of these men's experiences. Back matter includes historical photographs and written text that provides additional information about the book. I would have liked to see more discussion of the men's travels and their responses to what they saw. Still, the book is informative and well-written, and a fine complement to biography studies.

Loved it! I would definitely purchase Road Trip! for my niece and nephew.

The Four Vagabonds (Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and John Borroughs) took several Road Trips! between 1914 and 1924. Loved the illustrations by Jeremy Holmes and the text by Claudia Friddell. Loved the photographs at the end of the book and the fun stories. So glad that this fun American history has been recreated for youngsters! Thank you!

The centennial of the RV went relatively unnoticed. in the midst of covid.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to review Road Trip! in exchange for an honest review. Also thank you to Claudia Friddell (author), Jeremy Holmes (illustrator) and Calkins Creek imprint of Astra Books for Young Readers (publisher). Publication date is 16 Aug 2022..

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of Road Trip! by Cladia Friddell. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley and Astra Publishing House for providing an ARC to review.

Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs form an unlikely friendship and take their vacation time on the road, creating the first recorded road trip in the early 1900s. Join the four famous vagabonds as they travel across the united states documenting their adventures and sharing their home movies and photographs with the world.

This children's book was a visual delight. The colors were bright and adventurous, helping the characters come to life. I loved how the writer created a historically accurate adventure story for children. I was shocked to learn that the whole thing was reality-based. I especially appreciated the historic photos of the four famous men on their road trip in the back of the book. The nonfiction aspect gave it more gravitas than it would have otherwise.

An interesting enough book, but one I can really only see having much appeal within the US – here in Britain it featured a collective noun for the four characters I'd never come across, and one of the four is really not well known, if at all. Henry Ford, the Firestone of Firestone tyres, Thomas Edison and a nature expert befriend each other, and go on some of the first road trip styled holidays together, enjoying the more rural corners of the 48, even toting a president along with them for one week in their caravan of cars, prototype RVs, mobile kitchens and lord knows what else. Oddly, their renown and the fact they filmed capers for the cinema, kind of meant they packed it up in the end before they got completely swamped by people gawking at the escapade.

While some of the visuals here looked a little ungainly, it was a complete surprise to find the medium used was more or less paper collage; some of the scenes such as a top-down view of their dining table, surrounded by Edison's battery-powered strings of fairy lights, must have taken far more patience than I could bear. As for the script, it is a little imbalanced in being so child-friendly then dumping so much in the end-matter, but – especially if you tune out the attempts at quippy dialogue – it's a pleasant enough read. If this is really the beginning of cross-country motorised camping trips, then this is an incident of history we ought to know about; if however this is just resurrecting something whose modern equivalent would be a holiday video that goes viral, then I end up firmer on the ground of this being a niche topic. Still, a niche topic done well – three and a half stars.