Update April 16, 2010 – the giveaway is over but you can still read the review!
In Wanderlust and Lipstick: Traveling with Kids, published by Dispatch Travels, authors Leslie Forsberg and Michelle Duffy offer parents encouragement, inspiration and lots of tips and tricks for not just traveling with their kids, but savouring all the little special moments that happen along the way. Much of the book concentrates on helping parents with younger kids overcome whatever concerns they might have about packing up and hitting the road — whether it leads to a National Park near home or someplace on the other side of the world.
The authors have collected dozens of personal stories from moms representing many different social and economic situations. These vignettes are interspersed throughout the author’s own texts and provide varied insights and lessons learned while traveling with kids of all ages. Some of the stories are bittersweet, such as the mom who discovered her young son was seriously ill while traveling, and came to learn about accepting the kindness of strangers. Others serve to illustrate how stepping out of your comfort zone to travel afar can expand kids’ horizons and strengthen family bonds. For example, Jenny B, who took four kids ages 3 to 15 to Vietnam and Hong Kong, recounts how her kids developed lifelong interests in Asia and an interest in exploring the world.
Many Tips for Young Families
Beyond offering inspiration, the book also provides parents detailed how-to guides for everything from how to brainstorm trip ideas, conduct pre-trip planning and research, buget effectively, pack efficiently, and keep smaller kids entertained on the road. Parents with teens and tweens, who are veterans of many years of family travel planning, will probably find these how-to sections a bit rudimentary. However, for parents new to traveling with kids, the book’s tips and tricks can help take some of the stress out of planning an adventurous expedition. It is likely to help parents think more creatively about taking the tykes hiking, kayaking, skiing or to many destinations that reach far beyond the well trod roads to Disney and grandma’s house.
Parents who are wondering if they can possibly take young kids outside the US will find the book particularly helpful with regards to getting passports, setting up home exchanges and many other tips for taking the hassle out of international travel with kids. For parents with teens and tweens, the chapter on strategies for traveling with friends and family offers some good insights on how to successfully take along a friend. Another section rightly recognizes the need to give teens some independence on the road, even in foreign countries.
Overall, although parents of teens and tweens will find some inspiring nuggets in this book, they are likely to feel much of it is a review course. Parents with younger kids are likely to get more out of the book and will find that its mix of advice, personal stories and inspiration will help them relax and better enjoy the journey as well as the destination. This upbeat book would be a great gift for parents of young kids who loved to travel as a couple but wonder how they will ever fulfill their wanderlust with the kids in tow.
Win a Copy – Enter by Midnight April 15, 2010
If you’d like a copy of this book for your own, please follow us on twitter via @travelwithteens (we cannot DM you to tell you that you won unless you follow us) and tweet the following message before midnight eastern time Thursday April 15, 2010. You can tweet as much as you like but only one entry per person will count. We will randomly select the winner on Friday April 16th and notify the winner by Twitter DM:
Read @travelwithteens book review and win Wanderlust and Lipstick: Travel with Kids. Enter by midnight April 15 http://bit.ly/cWojsk
Disclosure
We’d like to thank to the publisher for providing us with both a complimentary review copy of Wanderlust and Lipstick: Traveling with Kids and a copy for our latest giveaway. The publisher had no control over the content of this review. We received no other compensation for this review. Travel with Teens and Tweens is paying to ship the book to the giveaway winner.
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