Traveling I 80 With Otto

Otto and Crackers continue to search for Georgie. A lead takes them on a road trip of small town USA.

Meet Otto! "Woof, woof!" Join Otto on his trip to the beach. He is looking for a new friend to play with. Do you think he will find one? Open this book and find out!

Otto and his father spot some weird and wonderful sights as they drive through the village, around the roundabout, along the highway, and into the dazzling heart of the city. Follow Otto to the very last page, turn the book around and travel back home with Otto. Did you spot the aliens? The yellow duckling? How many pizzas did Manolo deliver? Did you spy Tommy and Bic racing their pen and pencil cars? Follow the loop around and around - there and back - to spot new details each time.

This “poetic, poignant” (US Weekly) debut features last great adventures, unlikely heroes, and a “sweet, disarming story of lasting love” (The New York Times Book Review). Eighty-three-year-old Etta has never seen the ocean. So early one morning she takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots and begins walking the 3,232 kilometers from rural Saskatchewan, Canada eastward to the sea. As Etta walks further toward the crashing waves, the lines among memory, illusion, and reality blur. Otto wakes to a note left on the kitchen table. “I will try to remember to come back,” Etta writes to her husband. Otto has seen the ocean, having crossed the Atlantic years ago to fight in a far-away war. He understands. But with Etta gone, the memories come crowding in and Otto struggles to keep them at bay. Meanwhile, their neighbor Russell has spent his whole life trying to keep up with Otto and loving Etta from afar. Russell insists on finding Etta, wherever she’s gone. Leaving his own farm will be the first act of defiance in his life. Moving from the hot and dry present of a quiet Canadian farm to a dusty, burnt past of hunger, war, and passion, from trying to remember to trying to forget, Etta and Otto and Russell and James is an astounding literary debut “of deep longing, for reinvention and self-discovery, as well as for the past and for love and for the boundless unknown” (San Francisco Chronicle). “In this haunting debut, set in a starkly beautiful landscape, Hooper delineates the stories of Etta and the men she loved (Otto and Russell) as they intertwine through youth and wartime and into old age. It’s a lovely book you’ll want to linger over” (People).

Otto is a Book Bear and nothing makes him happier than when people read his book. But he also has a very special secret - when no one is looking he can come to life and explore the house. But one day something terrible happens: Otto's book is left behind when the family moves away, and now there is no one to read Otto! Otto must set off on his biggest adventure yet - to find a new home. But where is the best place for a Book Bear to live?

When time goes backwards, granting six-year-old Otto his wish that his attention-stealing baby sister was never born, it keeps going backwards, and Otto finds himself getting younger and younger.