We're Doing WHAT for Summer Vacation?
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After realizing that this big adventure was really going to happen, I decided that I needed to find out a little information about this so called Borneo place. I looked on my globe, but I didn’t see any place named Borneo. I found England and Florida (where I really wanted to go this summer!). Since the globe didn’t help, I thought school was a good place to get some answers. The next day I asked my third grade teacher, Mrs. Miles, if I could go to the library. She said, “OK” because she loved for us to read books. I walked down the hall to the library and asked the librarian, “Do you have any books on Borneo?” and she said, “Where’s Borneo?” When the librarian doesn’t know where a place is, you are in big trouble because librarians are super smart people and know all the books! I took this as a VERY bad sign. I soon realized that NOBODY knows where this Borneo place is. Every time I would tell someone that I was going to spend my summer in Borneo, they would say, “Where’s Borneo?” I even heard people ask Mom and Dad that same question when they would talk about Borneo. Why in the world do my parents want to take us to some place that nobody even knows where it is? Maybe nobody goes to Borneo because of those headhunters that Dad told us about! This was not sounding like a fun trip!
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About the Book
“We’re Doing What for Summer Vacation”? is a nonfiction story told by Ali, a typical nine-year-old American girl who spent the summer traveling on a budget across Borneo with her older brother and parents. Ali just wanted to be a normal kid with a normal family spending summer vacation at the beach in Florida. Unfortunately, she has former hippie parents that wanted a big summer adventure. This was not her idea of summer fun! On her adventure, she lived in a tree house, experienced bedbugs, learned a little about Muslim culture, ate strange food, went white-water rafting, got trapped in a stairwell alone and thought she was being kidnapped, trekked in the jungle, saw orangutans, experienced leeches, stayed with the locals in their houses, found real skulls from headhunters, discovered an island of lost children, and went scuba diving with turtles bigger than she was. This story is not your ordinary nonfiction story. It is a quirky journey about a typical girl experiencing a very untypical place.
About the Author
Cindy Davis holds a PhD in social work and is a university professor. She has written extensively in academic journals and has published academic books. This is her first travel book and first book for children and young teens. Cindy spent several years backpacking around Southeast Asia and Africa with her partner, Steve Rollason. They have lived in Hong Kong and Australia. Their son, Zak, was born in Australia in 1999. This book is coauthored by her ten-year-old daughter, Ali Rollason. Ali enjoys soccer, gymnastics, and her horses. They currently live in Franklin, Tennessee, and travel overseas whenever possible.