Alvin Ho: Allergic to the Great Wall, the Forbidden Palace, and Other Tourist Attractions by Lenore Look (review)

Poor Alvin Ho has considerably more trouble than most seven-year-olds just in navigating the familiar environs of his Concord, Massachusetts home, but nevertheless, his intrepid parents have decided it’s time for the family to visit relatives in Beijing. Worried about needing room in his suitcase for souvenirs, he wears all of his clothes at once; worried about getting through security, he takes all his clothes off; worried about everything else, he packs his PDK (personal disaster kit) with quite a few prohibited items. Alvin’s travel terrors don’t stop there: he refuses to ride the elevator to and from his relatives’ apartment on the thirty-second floor, cuts short their visit to the Great Wall because of a panic attack, loses his father’s passport, and freaks out over pit toilets in the Forbidden City. Meanwhile, though, Alvin’s narration of the guidebook provides young readers with a more reasonable visit to all of the sites in and around Beijing, and he and his long-suffering dad have a lovely day being creatively lost. The glossary that accompanies all of the Alvin Ho outings is also less fanciful and more informative than usual, offering kid-friendly but mostly accurate factoids of the history, culture and must-see attractions of China. The details of international travel, though wildly exaggerated for comic effect, would be effective in a discussion preparing young readers for real or imagined trips of their own; after all, if Alvin and his parents can do it and live to tell the tale, anyone can.