Travel/Cultures

 

Look through another's eyes with a book translated from another language. Scroll to the bottom for chapter books and teen fiction.

Picture Books

Over the ocean by Tarō Gomi

A young girl gazes out over the horizon, and wonders what lands lie beyond the ocean, and what the people are like who live in those lands.

Check out some of these titles to take a trip from wherever you may find yourself this summer!

Also available in: e-book | audiobook | e-audiobook | video

After living abroad, Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with America by walking the famed Appalachian Trail, which traverses 14 states and stretches 2,100 miles. Bryson's book offers a marvelous description and history of the trail and the mountains.

Also available in: audiobook | e-audiobook | video

In her early thirties, Elizabeth Gilbert had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want—husband, country home, successful career—but instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed by panic and confusion. This wise and rapturous book is the story of how she left behind all these outward marks of success, and set out to explore three different aspects of her nature, against the backdrop of three different cultures: pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and on the Indonesian island of Bali, a balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence.

Senior Discounts & Deals

Looking for ways to save money?   Senior discounts for a variety of services and goods are readily available.  Members of AARP are eligible for discounts simply by showing their membership card.  The Senior List is another resource for discounts available to individuals as young as 50 years of age.   Canton Township's Club 55 hosts monthly events and trips. Those over 60 can lunch at Senior Center daily (Reservations are required by 12 pm the day prior by calling 734/394-5485 ext. 1253).

In addition to offering discount and deal resources, these sites offer tips on retirement living.

Gift Card Granny

Tough Nickel

The Balance

 

Global Road Warrior is a comprehensive cultural database that features in-depth information on 175 countries, helpful for school reports or international travel and business. Information is broken down into categories such as Culture & Society, Food & Recipes, Language, National Symbols, Business Culture, Music, Education, and more! 

Global Road Warrior is an excellent resource for student projects and a great companion for international travelers.

The inspiring story of an ordinary guy who achieved two great goals that others had told him were impossible - first by setting a record for the longest automobile journey ever made around the world -- in the course of which he blasted his way out of minefields, survived a breakdown atop the Peak of Death, and came within seconds of being lynched in Pakistan. After that - although it took him 47 more years - he set another record by going to every country on Earth. He achieved this by surviving riots, revolutions, voodoo priests, pickpockets, and Cape buffalo. He survived  every kind of earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, volcanic eruption, snowstorm, and sandstorm that Nature threw at him  - and overcame attacks by crocodiles, hippos, anacondas, giant leeches, and flying crabs.

Exploring  the most extraordinary, off-grid, offbeat places on the planet, Alastair Bonnett's tour of the planet's most unlikely micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man's lands shows us the modern world from surprising new vantage points.

Central Asia has long stood at the crossroads of history. It was the staging ground for the armies of the Mongol Empire, for the nineteenth-century struggle between the Russian and British empires, and for the NATO campaign in Afghanistan. Today, multinationals and nations compete for the oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Sea and for control of the pipelines. Yet 'Stanland' is still, to many, a terra incognita, a geographical blank.The author takes readers along with him on his encounters with the people, landscapes, and customs of the diverse countries--Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan--he has come to love. He talks with teachers, students, politicians, environmental activists, bloggers, cab drivers, merchants, Peace Corps volunteers, and more.

Blue highways : a journey into America by William Least Heat Moon

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least-Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map--if they get on at all--only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

Assassination vacation by Sarah Vowell

A tour of key historic sites in America where incidents of political violence have occurred reveals lesser-known points of interest pertaining to each and shares information about how history has been shaped by popular culture and tourism.

Go on a quirky roadtrip right inside the library. Grab one of our Roadside USA matching quizzes from the Connect Your Summer Command Center. Match the roadside attraction with its location in the contiguous United States.

Your finished matching game can be submitted in the drop box in the CYS Command Center. Don't forget to include your email address. All prize drawing winners will be notified by email.

Check www.cantonpl.org/connect-your-summer to find more ways to earn badges. The last day to earn badges is Wednesday, August 17.

For more road trip information, check these resources:

Contains a map of the United States and simple road maps of each of the fifty states as well as Washington D.C., and includes facts, state symbols, roadside attractions, games, and more.

Go, go America by Dan Yaccarino

A collection of odd facts, including festivals, contests, and laws,about the states of the United States.

"Each time a girl opens a book and reads a womanless history, she learns she is worth less."   ~ Myra Pollack Sadker.  March is National Women's History Month.    History helps us learn who we are, but when we don’t know our own history, our power and dreams are immediately diminished.  Throughout the centuries, women have been strong contributors to our world, but  received no written recognition for their accomplishments.  

West with the Night by Beryl Markham
Also available in: e-audiobook

"West with the Night" is the story of Beryl Markham--aviator, racehorse trainer, beauty--and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and '30s.  During the pioneer days of aviation, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.

Also available in: e-book

A lively and provocative double biography of first cousins Eleanor Roosevelt and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, two extraordinary women whose tangled lives provide a sweeping look at the twentieth century. When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, his beautiful and flamboyant daughter was transformed into "Princess Alice," arguably the century's first global celebrity. Thirty-two years later, her first cousin Eleanor moved into the White House as First Lady. Born eight months and twenty blocks apart from each other in New York City, Eleanor and Alice spent a large part of their childhoods together and were far more alike than most historians acknowledge. But their politics and temperaments couldn't have been more distinct. Do-gooder Eleanor was committed to social justice but hated the limelight; acid-tongued Alice, who became the wife of philandering Republican congressman Nicholas Longworth, was an opponent of big government who gained notoriety for her cutting remarks (she famously quipped that dour President Coolidge "looked like he was weaned on a pickle"). While Eleanor revolutionized the role of First Lady with her outspoken passion for human rights, Alice made the most of her insider connections to influence politics, including doing as much to defeat the League of Nations as anyone in elective office. 

Drive, fly, or sail your way into these novels about teens traveling the world. 

Anna and the French kiss by Stephanie Perkins

When Anna's romance-novelist father sends her to an elite American boarding school in Paris for her senior year of high school, she reluctantly goes, and meets an amazing boy who becomes her best friend, in spite of the fact that they both want something more.

Are we there yet? by David Levithan

Sixteen-year-old Elijah is completely mellow and his 23-year-old brother Danny is completely not, so it’s no wonder they can barely tolerate one another. So what better way to repair their broken relationship than to trick them into taking a trip to Italy together? Soon, though, their parents’ perfect solution has become Danny and Elijah’s nightmare as they’re forced to spend countless hours together. But then Elijah meets Julia, and soon the brothers aren’t together nearly as much. And then Julia meets Danny and soon all three of them are in a mixed-up, turned-around, never-what-you-expect world of brothers, Italy, and love.

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