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Even for an experienced traveler like Charlie, Cuba is a place unlike any he has visited before - an island full of surprises, secrets and puzzling contradictions.When Charlie's artist mother is invited to visit a school in Cuba, the whole family goes along on the trip. But the island they discover is a far cry from the all-inclusive resorts that Charlie has heard his friends talk about.Charlie has never visited a country as strange and puzzling as Cuba - a country where he often feels like a time traveler. Where Havana's grand Hotel Nacional sits next to buildings that seem to be crumbling before his very eyes. Where the streets are filled with empty storefronts and packs of wild dogs, but where flowers and sherbet-colored houses may lie around the next corner, and music is everywhere. Where there are many different kinds of walls - from Havana's famous sea wall to the invisible ones that seem aimed at keeping tourists and locals apart.Then the family heads "off the beaten track," traveling by hot, dusty bus to Viñales, where Charlie makes friends with Lázaro, who often flies from Miami to visit his Cuban relatives. The boys ride a horse bareback, find a secret cache of rifles inside a little green mountain and go swimming with small albino fish in an underground cave. A rent-a-wreck takes the family into the countryside, where they find an abandoned hotel inhabited by goats, and a modern resort filled with tourists.And as he goes from one strange and marvelous escapade to another, Charlie finds that his expectations about a place and its people are overturned again and again.Key Text FeaturesillustrationsCorrelates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.6Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.

Husband-and-wife team Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel create a sequel to the enormously popular Travels with My Family and On the Road Again! - but with a twist. This time Charlie and his family stay home, and find adventure in their own Montreal neighborhood.Charlie can't wait for school to be over. But he's wondering what particular vacation ordeal his parents have lined up for the family this summer. Canoeing with alligators in Okefenokee? Getting caught in the middle of a revolutionary shootout in Mexico? Or perhaps another trip abroad?Turns out, this summer the family is staying put, in their hometown. Montreal, Canada. A "staycation," his parents call it. Charlie is doubtful at first but, ever resourceful, decides that there may be adventures and profit to be had in his own neighborhood.And there are. A campout in the backyard brings him in contact with more than one kind of wildlife, a sudden summer storm floods the expressway, various pet-sitting gigs turn almost-disastrous, and a baseball game goes awry when various intruders storm the infield - from would-be medieval knights and an over-eager ice-cream vendor to a fly-ball-catching Doberman. Then of course there's looking after his little brother, Max, who is always a catastrophe-in-the-making.Key Text Featuresillustrationskey text featuresCorrelates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.9Compare and contrast the themes, settings, and plots of stories written by the same author about the same or similar characters (e.g., in books from a series).

Charlie and his family are on the road again — this time to spend a year in the South of France. Unhappy at first, not wanting to leave his friends, his school and big-city life, Charlie soon finds himself caught up in the new adventures in their little village of Celeriac. He runs through the streets chased by bulls, survives an autumn flood and a winter blizzard, and discovers the pleasures of French cuisine, including snails, donkey sausage and runny cheese that smells like the boys'' locker room.Most of all, Charlie and his little brother, Max, grow fond of their neighbors — the man who steals ducks from the local river, the neighbor''s dog who sleeps right in the middle of the street, and their new friends Rachid and Ahmed, who teach them how to play soccer in the village, where the goal is the open door of the church.As a bonus, there''s a hilarious driving trip through Spain in their sardine-can car.In the end, Charlie discovers the bittersweet joys of living in a new place. "Part of me wanted to stay," he says. "Part of me wanted to go. I guess that''s the way it is with traveling . . ."A wonderful sequel to the immensely popular Travels with My Family.