As part of the #edublogclub year-long challenge to blog on education. While the official club has ended, they have shared posts to continue the journey through 2017. This week’s prompt was about traveling overseas and dream travels.
I must say I’ve been fortunate to have traveled a bit especially when I was younger, less so with a family, but I hope to get back to it as the kids get older. And of course, I always have a few destinations in my back pocket. So I’m going to take you around the world to some of the places I’ve visited and share a book recommendation set in or around the places I’ve visited to make this fun.
Russia
The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell is an intricate and moody story of a girl growing up outside of St. Petersburg where she and her mother are tasked with helping the wolves re-acclimate to the wild after being kept by Russian elites. When they lash out because they are wild animals, they are sent away, but to kill them is also bad luck. Darkly endearing.
Africa
Elephant Talk: The Surprising Science of Elephant Communication by Ann Downer-Hazell is exactly what the title and subtitle tell you it’s about as a short nonfiction explanation of how elephants communicate and how humans have studied and learned about these animals as people like Jane Goodall did with primates. It’s one of two reasons I went on a solo trip to Africa after I got my Bachelor’s degree– to see a wild elephant.
Europe
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce is and feels very “European”. A gentleman struggling with issues at home goes on a mysterious trek on foot to reunite with a woman reader’s believed was only a tangential person in his life only to discover the deeper connection and how spiritual a mission can be for the human spirit.
All the Places I’d like to Travel to Next…
It begins with a single step (actually, some money and a plane ticket) and I know a few places that are on my list, but in the meantime, I want to add a recent read that gave me the traveling bug again: Caitlin Doughty’s From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death. I’m a super fan of hers. I love her YouTube channel and everything she stands for. So her 2017 publication took her work a step further and highlights all the ways the dead die and are cared for after death. Not to pick one method over another but to highlight the similarities and differences in American death culture and what happens around the world for better or worse. She wants to educate and educate she did in her humor and curiosity.
Readers Be Advised 
Kathleen
November 18, 2017 at 12:53 am
What an awesome idea to weave books with destinations. I heard an author speak at the library last week and when she was being introduced, her bio mentioned a world trip where she travelled around the world and read a book set in each destination while she was there.
Kids has certainly put our travel plans on hold too. I’m glad I got to do a bit of travelling pre-kids as I still often reflect on those happy memories while going about the day-to-day routines. One day we’ll get back into it!
Kathleen 🙂
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Ines
November 20, 2017 at 8:38 pm
Thank you, Alicia, for sharing this exquisite mixture of travelling through reading and in real life.
I can’t travel since I walk with crutches, but I adapted quickly precisely by travelling through reading.
I would like to share the first two volumes of “Africa Treck” by a French – and young couple by then – Alexander and Sonia Poussin – that crossed the black continent, holding hands: 14 thousand kilometres in three years. Now they have two children and keep walking, with the help of a buffalo’s char, home schooling the kids and visiting NGO s in Africa.
Ines
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