Marie-Louise Gay, the beloved author and illustrator of the Stella and Sam series, and her husband David Homel, Governor-General-Award-winning translator of over 30 books, have combined forces in the last little while to write and illustrate the Travels series based on their family's vacations—and "stay-cations." The result has been a family affair: their kids' voices have informed the series and also the real, often funny conversations they have about the books in it.

*****

When our youngest son read Travels with My Family, the first of our Travels series, he couldn’t believe he’d survived his own childhood. “You guys did so many dangerous things with me!” he complained. “I should have called Youth Protection Services.” Then he made a play for a share of the royalties.

“No,” we told him. “Characters in books don’t get royalties. Only writers do. Write your own book.” Now we’re afraid he will!

Our oldest, meanwhile, showed up at our Montreal launch and happily co-signed copies of the book with us, adding “The Narrator” under his signature (more on that in a minute).

Nostalgia usually doesn’t lead to anything worthwhile, but our series of Travels books is the exception that makes the rule. We would sometimes linger at the table after dinner and think back to a time when we were young parents, going on vacations with our children. One story led to another, and pretty soon, Marie-Louise had a list of them that sounded suspiciously like the chapters of a book. The rest is history—and a series of book, too.

Writers writing about their families is familiar fare, but our books feature a few twists. First of all, Charlie, a boy of about ten or eleven, is the teller of these stories, not his parents. He’s only too happy to reveal everything about his family: his extremely embarrassing and risk-taking parents, and his little brother who has a knack for getting lost. Charlie’s voice is the voice of the book. We made that choice right from the start. Young readers, we figured, would rather read a book with someone their age telling the story, and we would rather write that book, too. Our readers recognize the situations immediately—being confined to the back seat of a car on a long trip is a classic—and they are amused and absorbed by Charlie’s cheekiness. He never holds back when it comes to pointing out his parents’ many weaknesses, and he marvels at their eccentricities while retaining the spirit of family togetherness.

When we visit schools, one of our favorite questions we ask young readers is this: “What do your parents do that embarrasses you?” The answers come fast and furious. Every kid in the group becomes Charlie commenting on his parents; every student becomes a storyteller. They quickly learn an important lesson about where stories come from—often from the back seat of the car, or the dining room table.

We don’t necessarily write problem-solving books, but there’s plenty of learning along the way for Charlie and his little brother, Max. In Travels with My Family, Charlie absolutely does not want to go on another off-the-beaten-track vacation with his parents. He wants to go to Disneyland instead. But he has no choice, and ends up in a succession of adventures involving sandstorms, flash floods, the Zapatista revolution in southern Mexico and, to top it all off, a band of marauding peacocks. By the time he gets to the last page, he realizes he’ll have plenty of things to tell when it comes time to write the inevitable “What did you do on your summer vacation?” essay that all kids have to produce in September for school.

Their adventures keep coming in the sequel, On the Road Again! Charlie and Max, big-city boys, are surprised when their parents suddenly uproot them to live for a year in a tiny village in southern France that’s no bigger than a speck of dust. But as raging bulls stampede down the narrow street past their house, they realize that their little village has plenty of things going on.

In Summer in the City, the third book in the series, just as Charlie and Max’s family are getting ready to pack their bags for another trip, their parents inform them that this summer they are going on a “stay-cation.” In other words, they’re staying home. Once Charlie gets over his disappointment, he realizes he can finally live his summer the way he wants to, free to seek his own urban adventures. There’s backyard camping with wild animals, endless quests for summer jobs, swimming for his life on a flooded expressway—and that’s just the beginning.

In all the Travels books, including the latest, due out in fall 2014, Charlie and Max have more than their share of adventures. Their lives are quite different, and quite a bit freer, than the over-managed lives of a lot of today’s kids.

That’s the message—get out there into the world!