Behold the kids reading list for Japan!  Can you tell I’m excited about taking the armchair adventure on the road?  Maybe I need to become a librarian when I return.

Some of the non-fiction is fairly mature and I’m looking forward to conquering those books together, huddled in our beds, heads together, after a long day.  When I first started thinking about this trip years ago, I imagined a line of boxes of books labeled for each leg of the trip and the need to cajole a grandma to send to us along the way.  While I prefer to hold the precious weight of a book in my hands, I’m tossing paper aside for electronic reading during this trip.

NON-FICTION

• A Geek in Japan by Hector Garcia
• A Year in Japan by Kate Williamson
• The Magic of Reality: How we Know What’s Really True by Richard Dawkins
• Shockwave Countdown by Stephen Walker
• The Rising Sun by John Toland

FICTION

• Samurai Mysteries series by Dorothy Hoobler
• Spirits of the Noh by Thomas Randall
• Blue Fingers: A Ninjas Tale by Cheryl Whitesel
• Tokyo Heist by Diana Renn

Santa brought the kids iPads with keyboards for the trip.  We struggled with this.  Here we are making an effort to leave all the stuff behind which is ironically requiring us to purchase more stuff.  Huh?  The reality is that a tablet serves as an entertainment device, online resource, and a vehicle for reading, writing, and presentation building — it became a no brainer.

And I finally got my hands on the 6^th-8^th grade curriculum for math and science so progress is being made!  Itching to create the Southeast Asia reading list…