Program the GPS and tie on the canoe. You’re going on a road trip with Cricket this summer!

If you think it’s hot this summer, be grateful you don’t live in Firewater Springs, where water boils in the creek and corn bread bakes right on the porch. If you want to cool off, how about going a-Viking to Iceland for a fantastic tale about magical runes and a honey colored horse named Frefaxi? Or go along on the first automobile trip across America with a dog named Bud. There’s no need to roll down the windows to keep cool, because there aren’t any. You’ll read the final episode of “When I Left My Village” about Ethiopian Jews escaping a famished land for Israel, and the first part of a true story about a girl who was one of thousands of children who contracted polio in the early 1950s.

All that, and a new photography contest, one of Ugly’s Crossbird puzzles, and the bug gang heads to the beach. If that doesn’t paddle your canoe this summer, what will?