A swing and a huge miss. Wonderful premise, wonderful character, gorgeous illustrations. Started off so wonderfully charming. Then it...completely lost track of what was going on. Suddenly it was about the story of T.S's ancestor. Then suddenly his entire trip across America was just over like that. 

And I thought okay, bit disappointing the whole journey across America bit was rushed...but that was a snail's pace compared to the last part of the book.

Then he gets stabbed, kills a guy, is saved by a giant flock of birds, joins a secret club, snubs the President, his mother was secretly in on the whole plot? He feels guilt about potentially killing his brother, but this is quietly just ignored in a speech in the Smithsonian?

Suddenly there's secret conspiratorial clubs working against the government? And it's not actually about a 12 year old who drew wonderful maps? Oh but don't worry because this is introduced and lasts for about 15 pages before the book ends.

Half of a lovely lighthearted story and the rest is just 7 different pure garbled nonsense stories, none of which are related, explained, or seemingly serve any purpose.