Long Road to the Circus

Twelve-year-old Suzy Bowles is tired of summers filled with chores on her family farm in Burr Oak, Michigan, and desperate to see the world. When her wayward uncle moves back home to the farm, only to skip his chores every morning for mysterious reasons, Suzy decides to find out what he’s up to once and for all.

And that’s when she meets legendary former circus queen Madame Marantette and her ostriches.

Before long, Suzy finds herself caught-up in the fast-paced, hilarious world of ostrich riding, a rollicking adventure that just might be her ticket out of Burr Oak.

This is the story of a girl who rides an ostrich straight to her dreams..

ABOUT

Betsy Bird is the collection development manager of Evanston Public Library and writes the blog A Fuse #8 Production for School Library Journal. Betsy is also the author of the picture books POP! Goes the Nursery Rhyme (March 2025), Giant Dance Party and The Great Santa Stakeout and she was awarded the Best Children’s Book of the Year (New York Times) for the middle-grade novel Long Road to the Circus, illustrated by Caldecott-winning illustrator David Small. She lives in Illinois.

David Small is a writer and illustrator who grew up in Detroit, Michigan, studied art and English at Wayne State University, and completed his graduate studies in art at Yale University. In addition to children’s books, David makes editorial drawings for such publications as the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and is a frequent contributor to many national magazines as well. David also writes book reviews for the New York Times Book Review. Recognition for David’s books include The Caldecott Medal (So You Want To Be President?, 2001), The Caldecott Honor (The Gardener, 1998; One Cool Friend, 2012), National Book Award Finalist (Stitches, 2009 and The Underneath, 2008), Christopher Award (That Book Woman, 2009 and The Gardener, 1998), ABBY Award Honor Book (The Gardener, 1997 and The Library, 1995), The New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year (The Library, 1995), and a Featured Selection for more than 10 years on Reading Rainbow (Imogene’s Antlers, 1985).

Suzy Bowles stumbles on the opportunity to learn ostrich-riding with the infamous Madame Marantette but her obligations to her family on the farm threaten to derail her dreams of a bigger life. Photographs and information on Madame Marantette are included in the book.

Behind The Scenes with Betsy!

This story begins, if we’re going to go chronologically, with my grandmother’s no-good uncle. This was a guy who came to live on the family farm but would skip out on his farm chores. And, if you’re on a farm, you’ve got one job, people. Instead, he would just walk miles to another town nearby. The family’s story was that he would walk to Mendon, Michigan where an elderly circus performer named Madame Marantette lived. Apparently, he was going there to find out how to train the horses on his farm to do circus tricks. It was a good family story but it wasn’t as if we believed it actually happened.

Fast forward to the eighties. My local illustrator growing up was David Small. I remember him doing school visits, and one day he even came to my fourth-grade class. My mom worked in a local independent bookstore called Athena Books in Kalamazoo, Michigan and so she knew him. After all, he would occasionally do book releases there. One day, he offhandedly mentioned that he lived in the old Marantette house and that, fun fact, this old circus performer used to live there.

My mom started connecting all the dots. So she looked into it, and sure as shooting, there was a Madame and she did live in the Marantette house. At which point we realized that, oh my gosh, it’s not that far from Burr Oak, where the no-good uncle would have been on the family farm. My mother told me all of this and I kind of tucked it away in the back of my mind. A couple of years went by, and then I started thinking to myself, wait a minute, David lives in the house that my grandmother’s no-good uncle used to visit. What if I wrote a picture book about this whole story with a circus performer and that no good uncle? That could be really fun.

So, I wrote the story as a picture book, I sent it to my agent and he sent David the book. David, in turn, had me come out to the farm to see the house itself. We then stopped by a historian in the area. She hands me all the information you could ever want on the Madame. It was a thick old packet of info and she’s like, here you go. Clearly conducting research is easy (at least, it is when someone else does all the work for you). By the way, if you ever want to know what Madam Marantette’s grandparents did for a living, I have that info for you.

Then David tells me, I don’t see it as a picture book. I see this as a novel. Please note that I had never written a novel before. However, I was inspired. Next thing you know, I write the book as a novel. What I didn’t know at the time was that David had passed on multiple Madame Marantette manuscripts over the years. What made mine any different? Ostriches. He had never illustrated an ostrich before. And the rest is history.

A talented and flamboyant equestrian, Madame Marantette, who died in 1922 and is buried along with her dog, in the Mendon Cemetery in Mendon, set the high jump record of 7 feet and 10 and one-quarter inches while riding sidesaddle. Her trotting ostrich, Gaucho, may be the only ostrich trained to drive hitched with a horse — also owned by Madame. 
Photo credit: St. Joseph County Historical Society of Michigan

Awards & Accolades

A Best Children’s Book of the Year, The New York Times