Hi–we haven’t been anywhere lately! There’s a pandemic and anyway it’s winter, so we’ve been staying home. And staying home. And staying home. I’m trying to be hopeful without jinxing it that things are moving in the right direction and that we’ll have an awesome summer full of travel.
But in the meantime, we read about places.
I realized we’ve amassed a pretty nice collection of travel-related books that we love over the past few years, so I thought I’d share a few of our favorites.
(Affiliate links ahead; if you buy something after following my links, I earn a small commission, but you don’t pay anything extra. Thanks for supporting Boxy Colonial on the Road! Also, I received Mona Lisa in New York and Rivers of the World as complimentary review copies. I wasn’t otherwise compensated and, as always, all opinions are my own).
1. Most of the Better Natural Things in the World
by Dave Eggers and Angel Chang
I remember reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius many years ago and thinking that it was kind of self-absorbed and didn’t really live up to the hype. So I’m glad that Dave Eggers has gone on to do so many interesting and not at all self-absorbed things since then, like this little book wherein a tiger wanders through, as the title suggests, most of the better natural things in the world. There’s but a single word per beautifully illustrated page, but there’s more information on all the natural things in the back.
What’s a chaparral?! See? I bet you thought you already knew about most of the better natural things in the world! I have read this book, and I can’t remember what a chaparral is. But the back of the book tells you.
2. Mona Lisa in New York
by Yevgenia Nayberg
A whimsical story about the Mona Lisa busting out of a museum to explore New York City. This reminds me of the kind of story I make up for Abe at bedtime, which is a good thing, because I’ve made up some pretty awesome stories for Abe at bedtime (SO MANY stories. He goes to bed EVERY NIGHT).
3. Northwest Passage
by Stan Rogers and Matt James
This one feels like a bit of a stretch, since even in non-pandemic times you’re probably not going to vacation in the Northwest Passage (although I just googled it and apparently you can, and now I’m totally intrigued by the possibility, although I doubt I’ll ever actually go on a cruise of any sort). But Abe and I love this book. It illustrates the lyrics from Stan Rogers’ fabulous song, “Northwest Passage” and includes fascinating information about the historical quest for the Northwest Passage. Consequently, Abe has made us all listen to the song about 4 million times this year, which is not such a bad thing, really.
4 and 5. This is Ireland and This is London
These two are part of a vintage series of travel books for kids that have been reprinted (with updates added when needed) in recent years. We bought these two in anticipation of our trip to England and Ireland a couple of years ago, but I’d like to have the whole series because they’re so adorable and charming.
6. National Parks of the USA
by Kate Siber
Now we’re reaching a category of books of which I’m especially fond: the ones with tons of pictures and information all over each page: an attractive and overwhelming (in a good way) wealth of facts. The last three books all fall into this category. So of course we love national parks, and Abe even has a national parks themed room, so we had to have this one, and it didn’t disappoint with it’s vintage styling but current information (well, current as of 2019. They keep adding more national parks!)
7. The 50 States
by Gabrielle Balkan
The subtitle reads “explore the USA with 50 fact-filled maps!” and that’s what you get. We have a lot of fun looking at these maps and deciding which places in each state we most want to visit.
8. Great Rivers of the World
by Volker Mehnert
Moving back to a global scale for our last selection–another example of the lots of colorful and fun and informative stuff on every page genre–is this big, lovely book about river all over the world. Each two page spread has a map of the river in question with lots of information about what you’ll find along the way should you take a trip on said river.
This is a very attractive collection of books, I have to say. Sigh. I love books. Excuse me while I go buy all the other kid travel books Amazon suggested while I was looking up links to these.
Anyone have suggestions for great travel books to get kids excited about the places you go? Let me know in the comments!
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