Sihpromatum: I Grew My Boobs in China (Volume 1)

"SIHPROMATUM" (Sip-row-may-tum) is a memoir series of one family's four-year backpacking adventure around the world. The first installment, "I Grew my Boobs in China", is the beginning of an intensely fascinating, sobering, and emotional memoir of Savannah's introspective and innovative family adventure.

In 2005, 14-year-old Savannah Grace's world is shattered when her mother unexpectedly announces that she and her family (mother, 45; brother, 25; sister, 17) would soon embark on an incredible, open-ended journey. When everything from her pets to the house she lived in is either sold, given away or put in storage, this naïve teenage girl runs headlong into the reality and hardships of a life on the road.

These pages do not describe a vacation to semi-exotic locales protected from the local culture by a veneer of private transportation, scheduled meals, and ritzy hotels. The family lives and travels as the local people do, a distinction that generates fascinating and unusual experiences rich in multicultural insights, as told from the perspective of a budding young author with a traveler's eye for detail.

Built around a startling backdrop of over eighty countries ("I Grew my Boobs in China" relates the family's adventures in China and Mongolia), this is a tale of feminine maturation - of Savannah's metamorphosis from ingénue to woman-of-the-world. Nibbling roasted duck tongues in China and being stranded in Mongolia's Gobi Desert are just two experiences that contribute to Savannah's exploration of new cultures and to the process of adapting to the world around her.