Travel Guides for Kids by M. Sasek

It's that time of year. School is letting out and parents are starting to wonder how to channel their kids' energy into something productive.

With that in mind, I thought I'd share some picture book titles this week that involve travel in some way. I strongly believe that travel is a great teacher. Even if you can't actually get out there and put your feet in another country, you can still travel through books.

First off, I'd recommend a series of books by author/illustrator M. Sasek. His books have been around for years so you should easily be able to find them in a library.

They are easy to recognize as they are all titled the same: This is Paris, This is London, This is Madrid, This is Rome, This is New York, etc.

Each one highlights common sights and daily activities you might see if you were to take a walking tour of that city. The text is sparse, allowing the illustrations to shine through.

Kids won't gain any sort of deep historical understanding about the world's greatest cities by reading M. Sasek's books.

Instead, by reading the illustrations, they will start to recognized some iconic structures like Big Ben and the Colosseum.

And they will also start to see that no matter where you go, people like to go to parks, play on swing sets, feed the squirrels and watch street artists.