Cooper’s Pack – Children’s Travel Guides

When planning a family vacation or getaway, we always try our best to include something every member will enjoy. We’ve even bought destination guidebooks featuring destinations ‘with kids’. Unfortunately, these are written by adults for adults. Though they might highlight child-friendly activities and destination, dry descriptions make fun activities sound boring and not-so-fun activities sound like downright torture for a child. Cooper’s Pack takes a completely different approach by creating travel guides specifically for children.

Guides are presented as photo journals of one travel-loving stuffed dog named Cooper. Cooper goes to different cities to visit friends or meet new ones while there – both showing him around the best spots and giving him a taste of local yummies. Kids can follow Cooper on his trip, noting places they would like to see while on vacation. Photos, humor, and facts are tied in seamlessly to foster a love of travel for children of any age. Hey, reading these even made me antsy to see Seattle for the first time and explore New York City more in-depth.

Details that stood out to me:

• Cooper always pays for tickets to places so children know all this fun might come at a price (helps them choose which ones sound most interesting)
• Suggests tips to add fun to every stop (i.e. place a coin on the window while eating at the Revolving SkyCity Restaurant and see how long it takes to go all the way around)
• Characters are polite to each other without being slimy and respectful to different preferences.

After the main section, the books also include:

• A map of places Cooper visited
• More to explore – including festivals, city lingo, attraction facts, common misconceptions, and short biographies of the featured travelers
• Photo collection with captions
• Place for child to insert their own photo, bio, and highlights of their own trip to that destination.

These guide books are a great resource for children and parents. There were many things that my husband and I learned and ideas we’d like to check out on a future visit. Of the three books, Seattle was my favorite. My least favorite was Alaska as it had too many facts and attractions were too far between.

More travel destinations will be coming soon so you might want to keep an eye out for London, Paris, Athens, and Bangkok guides. They also have Amsterdam as a future book so I’m curious to see if they do this famous part of The Netherlands justice. Also, to get your child(ren) even more excited for their upcoming family vacay, check out the interactive ebooks. So hurry and introduce you kids to Cooper’s Pack, their own personal tour guides.