Skip to main content

Are We There, Yeti?



Are We There, Yeti?
By Ashlyn Anstee
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2015, Picture Book

The friendly, big-toothed, marshmallow like bus driver, Yeti, is taking a class on a field trip. This particular trip holds a surprise destination, and all the while the children are asking, "are we there, Yeti?" They travel what appears to be a very long time past various scenes, starting with a small town to a coastal beach and eventually up into the high mountains. When they finally arrive to the snowy mountain top all the children are a bit confused, until small yeti children begin to appear throughout the next pages. The human children and yeti children play together in the snow, making snowmen, sledding, and having a snowball fight. When it comes time to leave the children don't want to go, exclaiming that, "they aren't ready, Yeti". The sweet Yeti reminds them that they will return soon. And so begins their journey back home, but not without a child or two asking, "are we home, Yeti?"

This book is a very cute play on the classic road trip question, "are we there yet?" With a silly, over-sized, and awfully jolly yeti as a bus driver. The story line is fairly simple and easy to read with a majority of the text in word bubbles. The fun illustrations will keep young reader's eyes lingering. If they look close enough they may even discover the story before it unfolds in text with various clues hidden throughout the illustrations. All-round a fun read-out-loud or simple enough for a beginning reader to read-a-loud.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Alice with a Why

Alice with a Why By Anna James New York: Penguin, 2026. Fiction. 240 pgs. In 1919, in the aftermath of the first World War, Alyce is living with her grandmother in the English countryside. Her grandmother, also named Alice, tells Alyce (with a y) stories from her childhood adventures in a wonderful land filled with white rabbits and mad hatters. Alyce doesn't really believe the silly stories, she just misses her father who was killed in the war. One day, Alyce receives a mysterious invitation to tea, and subsequently falls into a pond where she is transported to Wonderland. Her grandmother, of course, is that Alice. Alyce is prompted by the Mad Hatter, Dormouse, and March Hare to seek out the Time Being and put an end to the war between the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon. Thus begins Alyce's adventure through Wonderland. I have a certain soft spot for the original story of Alice in Wonderland. It is one of my particular favorites and I often have a hard time reading new int...

Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...

Review: Faker

Faker By Gordon Korman New York: Scholastic Press, 2024. Fiction. 214 pages. 12-year-old Trey is used to starting over at a new school -- he has the routine perfectly memorized: make new friends, introduce his dad to the wealthy parents of his new friends, and "Houdini" themselves out of there before they get caught running their latest scam. Trey's dad is a master con artist, and Trey has just been promoted to full-partner. Their new scheme for the next big score brings them to the affluent suburb of Boxelder, TN where Trey's dad has cooked up a fake electric car company for investors to buy into. The only problem is that Trey is starting to grow tired of moving around and never putting down roots, especially after forming a fast friendship with Logan and developing a crush on Kaylee, a socially conscious girl in his class. As Trey longs for a normal life, is there any way he can convince his dad to get out of the family business? Gordon Korman is a perennial favorit...