The Road is a Dog

For lovers of travel – and dogs! How do human travels look through the eyes of a dog?

What do you call a dog’s travelogue? A traveldog! A cross between Karel Čapek’s Dášeňka: the Life of a Puppy and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

A dog likes to do his master’s bidding. So, when this master sets out on a trip across Europe, his loyal four-legged friend must tag along – or at least sit patiently in the back of the car. Barnaby the dog is the narrator of this travelogue, which takes us from a village near Prague to Paris, the Atlantic Coast and then through Spain, Portugal and Italy all the way to the Balkans. Barnaby comments on his master’s deeds as they go. We experience comical situations through the dog’s eyes, which see many of the acts we perform automatically as absurd. Children, who often see things in the same way, will soon find an ally in Barnaby.    

Takeaways for the young reader from this travelogue will include an appetite for new things, landscapes and people. After all, does adventure not wait around every corner? Anyone who has left their mark on all four legs of the Eiffel Tower will find their way. More important still, only when we travel do we appreciate the true meaning of home. Home is where your bowl and blanket are.  

Having first captured his experiences of life on the road in the poetic/philosophical travelogue A Nomad’s Gallery / Kočovná galerie (2014), Petr Šesták now revisits them in this book for children.

Reader age: 6+

Illustrated by Františka Iblová

Františka Iblová (born 2000) graduated in Graphic Arts from a secondary and higher vocational school for the applied arts. She is currently a student at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (UMPRUM) in Prague, under Juraj Horváth in the Studio of Illustration and Graphics. Her work combines experimental graphic art techniques with reportage illustration.