Passport to the World

Passport to the World
Written by Craig Froman
Published at MasterBooks

About the book

Travel the World in the Comfort of Your Own Home

Here is an out-of-the-ordinary geographic journey of 26 language groups from Armenian to Zulu! Discover various cultures and customs, fill up your passport with stickers from the countries you visit, and learn that children from around the world are often a lot like you!

Did you know:
• The language journey began just over 4,000 years ago at the Tower of Babel.
• There is a huge slab of limestone in Bolivia that has some 5,000 dinosaur footprints.
• A traditional Christmas Eve dinner in Lithuania includes 12 dishes, one for each of the Apostles.
• All Bengali literature was rhymed verse if written before the 19th century.

Passport to the World helps you encounter people and places all over the world, including facts about countries, their capital cities, maps, flags, populations, and religions. This is a fun and fact-filled adventure you can share with others through interactive games included in the back of this book and in your very own passport.

Now, grab your passport and get ready, steady, and go!

My Thoughts

How can you beef up your geography lessons to make it interesting with your kids?  The answer is in a passport – Passport to the World that is.

This year I have been blessed beyond measure with geography products.   And to complete this blessing, I recently received the book Passport to the World to review.   If there was something that could have complete our geography curriculum that was it.   Recently I asked my son, Alexandre, to discover more about a country.  He picked China which is also a country where a lot of persecution for Christians is existent.   He was interested in this country so he sat down and started to investigate it with the various books we had at home.    At one point, he needed to write some of the things said in their language.   We were at lost because we didn’t have the information on hand.   I knew we could look on the internet but we just didn’t had the time to get to it.   Then came a package from New Leaf  Publishing and in it I discovered Passport to the World – Your A to Z Guided Language Tour.    I wondered if China’s language – mandarin was in it…  and yes it was.   Perfect.

The book comes with a little passport as well as some stamps that your child can use after he has “visited” the country.   For each country featured in this book, you will find some fast facts, pictures and how to say hello, goodbye, thank you and peace.  You will also visualize the money used in that country and learn interesting information related to the country.   The only thing missing would be a recipe from the country.   Wouldn’t that be fun to experience some of the food that the people living there eat?   I think it would be.  But this particular activity can easily be created with a bit of search on the internet.

The book begins with a map of the journey with each countries identified on a World Map.   And in case you are wondering, we are indeed discovering countries while going through the alphabet.  Then you can read about the history of languages which is recorded in the book of Genesis – remember the Tower of Babel?   Well, the kids will review (or learn) about this event in history as well as more information about the language families that exist around the world. 

After that you embark in a discovery tour for each language featured in the book.    You will learn more about Armenian, Bengali, Cherokee (what? not Canadian eh? *grin*), Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Icelandic, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Mandarin, Norwegian, Oriya, Pashto, Quechua, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu.  Each language has two pages dedicated to it and it’s country of origin.  

At the end of the book, you can explore some facts about each countries like population, life expectancy, literacy, square miles, internet users, and monetary units.  Two little games are also included where the child can name that flag or name that country.

Finally, the book suggest ten different ways on how to break the language barrier via ten non-profit organizations helping children around the world.    Introducing your kids to these kind of organizations are good.   

This book is beautifully written and very colourful.   It is definitively a must for homeschoolers.   Not only you will learn more about a language and it’s country but you can travel around the world without leaving the comfort of your home.  

Watch this cute video presenting the book.

Passport to the World is available at your favourite bookstore, even amazon.ca.   Happy Travelling!

Disclaimer: I was given the book from New Leaf Publishing Group/MasterBooks for review purpose. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the sponsor in any way.  All opinions expressed here are only my own.