Mission London: A Scavenger Hunt Adventure: (Travel Book For Kids)

We took a trip to London, but I wasn’t sure if my 8 year old son would appreciate everything we were seeing, so I bought Mission: London for him. This book was excellent! The book has many must-see places in London (not quite everywhere, but most of the places we went). My son liked searching for things that the book told him to look for. Even as we were standing in line for Westminster Abbey, he was looking for the gargoyles on the exterior! The book was great because it gave some basic information about the building and then a few interesting facts—nothing too overwhelming. The book encourages kids to engage with what they’re seeing—rather than wandering aimlessly with no idea what they’re looking at. You could use this for kids younger than 8, if you’re willing to read it and help kids find it OR if you have an older child/multiple children reading and working together. I’d say ages 8-12 are ideal. If you’re taking kids to London, this is a must have!

A great book, we used this on a family vacation. It ended up being our #1 guide to London. It had lots of great info and the kids were really motivated and excited to explore and learn more about the city. Great size, it's not too big, it fits in a bag and is light enough to carry around. My only piece of feedback would be to include a map in future editions. We've used these books for other cities too and will definitely use it again if we go somewhere new.

We bought the Florence and Amsterdam versions of this excellent series before as a surprise for our daughter when making trips abroad. These were unexpected successes and worked really well; it made her visits to the Uffizi and the Rijksmuseum, otherwise torturous to young children, a much more exciting and memorable experience and at the same time it didn’t totally emerge her i.e. it left lots of room for interaction. Also in those cases it helped us as parents to plan and schedule our trip. We live in London so we’ll have plenty of opportunity to complete the different parts of the book. The puzzles and setting is generally entertaining and challenging while there is a material educational element as well. Highly recommended to families with young children aged 7 to 11. Although her younger 5-year old brother liked to help out with most of the challenges as well, like finding statues and details in paintings.

Not even a book I didn't like it at all

We've used several books from the Mission scavenger hunt series, to the extent that they've become part of our trip planning and we're disappointed if a city doesn't have a corresponding book. Mission London did exactly what we hoped, getting our kids genuinely excited about the city and engaged in our trip before we even left home. The scavenger hunt format is really clever. Instead of dragging reluctant kids through historical sites, they're actively searching for gargoyles, coats of arms, and other details they learned about in the book. The gamification element (earning points for spotting specific features) turns sightseeing into a game and an occupied kid is a happy kid, in my experience. If you're traveling with kids and want them to be engaged in what they're seeing, this series is fantastic. Highly recommended!