You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day

I originally fell in love with Mo Willems' work when reading books to my 4 year old nephew (or rather him reading them to me). I ordered this book for adults wondering if it he could also write for an older audience. And yes, he can. This book is humorous, delightful and original.

Before Mo Willems became a children's book author, he packed sketchbook and set out to explore the world. At the end of each day he drew a cartoon of a single event which stuck in his mind - and his sketch diary YOU CAN NEVER FIND A RICKSHAW WHEN IT MONSOONS: THE WORLD ON ONE CARTOON A DAY is the result. Each page holds a full-page black and white panel blending humor with observation. An excellent choice for cartoon fans and travelers alike, a foreword by Dave Barry adds to the package. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

This book is absolutely delightful. When the author was just out of school, he took a trip around the world, and each day he drew the one thing that stuck out in his mind. Fifteen years later, he added commentary and occasionally context to each cartoon, and publishes the whole darn thing. The things he records is what the rest of us usually remember the best when we come back from a trip. This book doesn't consist of pictures of landmarks and more landmarks. It's a true distillation of his experiences, and it bounces from funny to poignant to regretful and back again. His Dutch grandmother is distressed to discover that a year traveling around the world doesn't include 10 months visiting her in Holland, and he gets pickpocketed by one of three men, but he doesn't know which one. He regrets being wary of two Iranian men he met at the time, the Turks are offended when he tries to locate malaria pills in their country, and he gets embarassed when someone fusses over the cold he got from partying too much in Pamplona. It's not geared towards kids at all--I never even heard of Mo Willems when I picked up this gem. It's a truly wonderful travelogue though.

Mo's newest book is a "page-turner" for the armchair traveler with a sense of humor. Each page has a great cartoon of a unique time and place. I especially enjoyed Mo's impressions of places I have been; his graphics refreshed and enhanced my own memories. This is a great gift idea for the college graduate (unless, of course, you want them to go get a job instead of seeking adventure first!)

When you think about it, picture book author/illustrators by and large do not suddenly come out with thick memoir-like tomes. Not even Maurice Sendak has done it. It just isn't done. So when I found myself hefting Mo Willems's handsome 396-some encapsulation of his time spent traveling around the world in 1990, I didn't quite know what to make of the idea. Willems is cute as a button and he pens a mean pigeon but can he ... (how shall I put this?) ... well, can he do a book that isn't five-year-old-centric? Apparently, yes. Yes and indeed and thank you kindly, m'am. Taking a concept for a book that could've easily ended up as a better idea than product, Willems has put together a thoughtful look at how we've changed in the eyes of the world, how the people of the world appear to us, and how difficult it is to cultivate an "us" vs. "them" mentality when you've just met the "them" firsthand. It was a kind of cartoon diary. When young Mo Willems, future cartoonist/author/Nickelodeon pawn, graduated from college he took his newfound freedom as an opportunity to take the ultimate worldwide unguided tour. Patches in place on jeans and sideburns making their, "precipitous drop toward my shoulders", Mr. Willems chose to record his experiences in the form of a cartoon a day. These cartoons are of a wide and somewhat assorted variety. They may be illustrations of all the goatees seen that day, or a picture of a long skinny Mo reenacting a situation. They might even be just a view of something he found particularly touching or sweet, like a boy watering a public tree. There are some constants, of course. Each cartoon includes the date, a description, and where Mo was on that given date. Usually there is also an additional comment below this information at the bottom of the page. It's here that present day Mo gives a little context to what you are seeing. He might explain how the trip was going, the story behind the cartoon, or just riff a one-liner on what you see. Sometimes he won't even say anything at all, leaving his original comments and pictures to stand on their own. Each leg of the journey in this book is indicated by its own map. Those maps then give a convoluted but legible dotted line that shows where Mo done gone. I gotta say, fresh-outta-college Mo had a good eye and ear for his subject matter. It would be the height of narcissism to take something you created in your youth that wasn't funny and publish it for the masses to messily consume. The moral equivalent of printing your high school poetry, say. Fortunately for everybody involved, young Mo was a pretty funny cat. Captions like, "bad day for the hand crafted tribal blowdart salesman" and "the locals call him `Mr. Socks'", hardly even need pictures. They're funny all on their own. The young artist's consistency is also something to cheer on. Admittedly I haven't gone over all 300-some pictures in this book to make absolutely certain that he wrote every day