Mo Willems Travels the World in You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons

“In the world of children’s books, the biggest new talent to emerge thus far in the '00s is the writer-illustrator Mo Willems.” This quote from The New York Times Book Review may seem a bit bold, but I’d have a hard time arguing with it. Willems, who has been lauded for his work on Sesame Street and his prolific output of high-quality books for the past decade or so, is a minimalistic genius with a knack for crafting stories that are at once hilarious and poignant. I’ve been consistently impressed with his abilities, so when my friend Libbie passed along the intriguing volume on which this quote functions as a back-cover blurb, I was eager to delve into the book and see what insights it might hold.

The book in question is You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day. The hefty book documents the trip that Willems took in 1990, when he was a 22-year-old college graduate. With a notebook, a pen and a spare set of clothes, he set off for a year-long voyage, on the cheap and off the beaten path, a journey of self-discovery and cultural awareness. He didn’t follow a clear roadmap; his went with the flow and spent as much time sampling local flavor as he could, proudly wearing the badge of “traveler” rather than “tourist” – a distinction, he says in his introduction, made mostly by the fact that “travelers” do not buy T-shirts of the destinations they have visited.

Earlier this year, I tried to do the 365 Project, an online challenge to take and post a photo every single day for a year. I lasted little more than a month. How much more difficult would it be to manage a cartoon a day? Then again, while I am impressed with his diligence, I know that if I were to undertake such a monumental trek, I would want to have some record of it, and if you’re a skilled cartoonist, this seems like a natural way to do it. I don’t know if it ever occurred to him at the time that he might one day compile the results into a book; he describes the cartooning as “the ritual that held the trip together, gave it purpose, made it real.” Each day got one sketch and only one, and it’s funny to read his incredulous reflections on some of the cartoons, wondering why this was the moment from that day that he decided to capture. He stopped just short of 365 days, which is rather disappointing considering how close he came to a perfect year-long record, but maybe it’s fitting for a trip and a collection of cartoons that is decidedly off-beat.

Willems’ trip is an epic adventure. While I am impressed with his ritualistic discipline, what really wows me is his fearlessness in meandering from one country to the next, usually with no companions to guide him along his way. While Willems displays a talent for making new friends, and this must have made his trip considerably more pleasant than it might otherwise have been, there’s still a sense of isolation about his trek. This is his solo journey, and others just happen to come in and out of it from time to time. For me, a gal whose strongest literary identification has always been with Bilbo Baggins, the timid protagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit whose deep adventurous streak lay dormant for years before it burst forth, I found that reading this further stirred up my wild Took side, even though only a few of the stops on Willems’ itinerary are on my own must-see list.

Dave Barry provides a footnoted Foreword on the subject of travel that had me in gales of laughter as he describes the tedium of being a part of an official TWA tour and expounds upon his frustration with European toilets and tour guides who are too obsessed with flying buttresses. Willems’ introduction is quite amusing as well, though it also explains the circumstances of his trip quite effectively and includes some reflection upon how it impacted his life. He saves most of that, though, for the epilogue, in which he discusses how his trip forced him to see that the world may feel very big when he’s globe-trotting all year, but the sentiments about which the Sherman Brothers wrote have a basis in fact. People on the other side of the world are just as real as those in the United States, and he can no longer feel detached when he watches footage of disasters unfolding in some other part of the globe. The trip and his book, then, are largely lessons in empathy. While he sees the weird, the wacky, the wonderful things that make each place unique, he shows that even in the most remote locations, that shared humanity is very real.

Willems divides the book into sections of a month at a time, with each month’s entries preceded by a two-page spread of a map containing a list of countries he visited and a rough trail depicting his journey. He started and ended in the United States; in between, he visited England, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, France, Spain, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, China, Macao, Japan and Canada. It seems he especially liked Thailand, as he spent well over a month there; other stops got short shrift, like Israel, which he left early after missing the bus to Jerusalem and deciding to hop a bus to Cairo instead. When he does return to America, it’s interesting to see him making his observations from an outsider’s point of view. After so much time away, it’s easy for him to look at the United States as foreign territory too, especially places he’s never been before.

Every cartoon in the book has a page to itself. Those who have come to appreciate Willems’ style from his children’s books will most likely recognize some similarities, particularly in his self-portraits, which have much in common with his illustrations of Trixie’s dad in the Knuffle Bunny books. The vast majority of the cartoons depict people, most of them random strangers doing something that struck him as unusual or funny. The drawings are full of bold lines and expressive faces, and each includes a caption noting the date, the location and the moment’s significance. Underneath most pictures is further explanation by Willems 15 years later. Some of these notes are illuminating, some poignant, and most have some element of humor to them.

For me, standouts include the following:
6-13 – “Perhaps they come standard with a third-class ticket, because never in my life have I taken a ferry trip that didn’t include at least one drunken Australian guitar player.”
7-13 – Willems marvels over the shallow chatter he overhears from a pair of American girls touring Dachau.
8-17 – A simple depiction of a raging monster with the caption “my tummy”.
9-19 – A self-portrait depicting his joy at receiving mail from his friends back home via the American Express office.
10-10 – Another self-portrait, this time showing Willems attempting to take a “shortcut” across a river in India.
11-22 – A despondent Frenchman searches for his lost puppy in Nepal.
12-24 – A description of the difficulties a traveler faces in finding decent reading material.
1-10 – A reflection on the joys of hitch-hiking in Malaysia.
2-18 – “Scarecrow traffic cops.”
3-17 – A Chinese version of Randy, the overly layered little brother in A Christmas Story.
4-18 – A kid trying really hard to get toss a ketchup packet into a bucket at a McDonald’s birthday party in New Mexico.
5-14 – The rather detailed account of Willems’ ordeal with a terrifying Canadian border guard.

This is not a children’s book. Willems depicts drugs, alcohol and various forms of debauchery. He discusses the devastating effects of wars and natural disasters. He occasionally draws people half-clothed or entirely naked. While he thanks his parents for giving him the travel bug from a young age and espouses the virtues of children exploring the world early, this volume contains his ruminations as a young adult and a more mature adult, and the intended audience is adults as well. That’s not to say that a child might not get something out of this, especially a teenager thinking of traveling abroad in the near future. However, I think most elementary-aged kids would find many of the pictures and explanations perplexing, and many parents would find them inappropriate. Because of Willems’ far-reaching popularity with youngsters and because this looks like a book that could be aimed at that age group, it’s best to be aware that this is a Willems book that deviates from the norm.

But oh, is it fascinating. I loved seeing his little slices of life and reading his observations on how the world has changed and how it hasn’t. I think the book provides great insight into how he thinks and offers hints about where he might have gotten ideas for some of his later stories. The book is witty, thought-provoking and compassionate, and in this way, it does have a great deal in common with the rest of Willems’ books. It’s an unusual exercise in immersion journalism that leaves the reader wanting to see the world but also more ready to find the remarkable in the everyday. As Willems says, “Whenever I want to roam free and experience the world again, all I have to do is open my front door and step outside. I know that the world will be there to meet me.” Wise words indeed. But I’m glad he decided to meet the world first.