Kids Travel Books 2016 Reading Challenge

I love lists.

And challenges.

And challenges based on lists.

And reading.

And travel.

And kids’ books about travel.

And challenges based on lists that are focused on travel.

And I want that challenge to be kids’ books related.

Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel for 2016.

Back in October Lonely Planet released their Best in Travel for 2016. I live in one of their choices, the United States, but the other 9 countries are not on my “to see” list this year. But, I’m going to use this year to learn about them anyway.

They’re going to be my challenge for the year.

Why Lonely Planet’s list?

I decided to go with Lonely Planet’s Top Countries list for many reasons.

• I can’t come up with my own list Honestly, if I had to try to narrow down my choices of what I wanted to challenge myself with for the upcoming year, I’d drive myself crazy. They’ve already done the legwork and I like their list.
• 10 countries If I read one book a month I still have two months where I can pick my own countries. Other lists are either too short or way too long for my purposes.
• Interesting variety The ten countries they include are a nice variety of places. They’re spread out around the globe. They’re not heavily mainstream or too obscure.
• Little experience I’ve formally studied and traveled to many countries, but this list has a lot of places I’ve never really experienced. Yes, I’m currently living in the U.S., but I can pick an area of the country or point in history I haven’t read much about in the past. I lived in Japan and studied Japanese, but that was a lifetime ago.

Yay for not having to develop my whole list from scratch. Yay for choice.

The official Kids Travel Books 2016 Reading Challenge

I’m going to read a children’s book about or set in each of the listed countries.  My two wild card options will be something local (likely North Carolina-based) and something having to do with my heritage (the Philippines).

For those paying attention, the USA is already on the list. That’s fine. I’ll read a more general book and a book for North Carolina specifically.

So, for your reference, here’s links to kids’ travel books about the 10 countries on Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel List for 2016.

1. Children’s books about Botswana | Let’s learn about Botswana
2. Children’s books about Japan
3. Children’s books about the USA
4. Children’s books about Palau
5. Children’s books about Latvia
6. Children’s books about Australia
7. Children’s books about Poland
8. Children’s books about Uruguay
9. Children’s books about Greenland
10. Children’s books about Fiji

Some of these are going to be hard. Even Lonely Planet doesn’t have books aimed at kids for many of their choices. Maybe they’re using this year to beef up their kids catalog!

I’ll update this blog once a month with a children’s travel book review, a suggested book about the same place for adults, and a related kid-friendly activity. I’ll use the hashtag #ktbreadingchallenge on twitter and instagram.

If you’d like to join me, please do! Feel free to use Lonely Planet’s list, or create your own. I definitely recommend, though, that you pick at least one book that is hyper-local to you, and one book that tells something of your heritage.

I’ll be using the following badge on any related posts:

Doesn’t it sound like fun? I hope you join me!