It’s a Big, Big World:
Great Travel Writing for Kids
by Tom Burns
Go to the “Travel” section of your local bookstore and you’ll find stacks of books all about Paris, Rome, and various other exotic locations. But do you know what you won’t find? Very many books for kids. While there are lots of geography books written for children, there are precious few works of travel writing — memoirs, guidebooks, or real-life travel adventures — that are actually written with young readers in mind.
If you want to show your kids what a remarkably enriching experience travel can be — without having to empty your bank account — try sharing one of these rare gems of kid-focused travel writing with them and watch as they slowly begin to grasp the awesome power of wanderlust.
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Around the World
Available from:This fantastic graphic novel collects three true stories about a trio of amazing 19th Century adventurers who all set off on trans-global voyages inspired by Jules Verne’s famous novel, Around the World in 80 Days (a classic that well-read tweens will still appreciate). Phelan tells how a sailor, a bicycle enthusiast, and a famous female reporter all fought against harsh conditions and overwhelming odds to complete their circumnavigations of our planet. A beautifully-told collection of travel tales.
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You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons: The World on One Cartoon a Day
Did you know that the author of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus once backpacked around the world? It’s true, and, thankfully for us, he catalogued his trip by drawing one cartoon every single day. This perceptive, wildly original travel memoir puts you inside the mind of a world traveler thanks to Willems’s unfiltered daily observations. Yes, the cartoons do occasionally reference alcohol, cigarettes, and few other not-kid-friendly realities (nothing too bad), but being able to so vividly show kids how one of their favorite authors experienced world travel is worth a little selective reading (or awkward bedtime conversation).
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The Not-For-Parents Travel Book
This well-designed title from the noted guidebook publisher has an impressive mission statement — it tries to make the case for why kids would want to visit almost 200 different countries around the world. It breaks down cool, weird, scary, and fascinating details about every country and comes across less like a reference book and more like an “OMG” bucket-list of places kids have to visit one day. A very fun, very browsable book.
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A Little House Traveler: Writings from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Journeys Across America
Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books are some of the most readable and popular works of historical nonfiction ever published. Wilder also wrote a series of travel diaries that offer an astonishingly detailed and personal account of what it was like to travel across the American continent before the age of airplanes and iPads. Fans of the Little House books (and any lover of history) will adore these travelogues.
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Up: A Mother and Daughter's Peakbagging Adventure
Available from:While there’s not a lot of material written about travel for children, there’s even less written about traveling WITH children. That’s one of many reasons why this memoir is so fascinating. Herr wanted her children to love the outdoors, so she decided to hike New Hampshire’s forty-eight highest mountains with her 5-year-old(!) daughter. Sounds impossible, right? If you want to teach your children that even the smallest among us can accomplish great things, this is an excellent title to read with them.
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This Is Paris
If you want to introduce your children to the world through a more artistic lens, you can’t do better than the classic This Is series of travel books created by Czech illustrator Miroslav Sasek. The first book, This Is Paris, was released in 1959 and it’s gorgeous. It offers a visual travelogue of the famous city, captured from the perspective of a young child, and it feels like a cool, retro travel poster brought to life. Sasek also created kid-friendly guides to London, Rome, New York, Munich, Cape Canaveral, and many other iconic locales. (Most were updated and re-issued in the 2000s.) The way that Sasek captures the timeless, breathless beauty of these cities will make your kids want to wallpaper their bedrooms with his illustrations. (Hide your scissors.)
