10 Children’s Books to Inspire Curiosity, Travel & Exploring the World
You don’t need a plane ticket to raise a kid who is curious about the world. Some of the best adventures start with a book and one really good question. As a former elementary school teacher and lifelong traveler, I’ve always loved books that do more than teach kids facts. The best ones make kids wonder why. They introduce a place they’ve never heard of, show them how someone else lives, make them look more closely at a map, or send them down a rabbit hole about something wonderfully weird. After all, I am a visual learner myself!
That’s a big part of the idea behind Field Trip Collective: helping kids see that stories hide everywhere and giving them reasons to keep asking questions. So whether you’re raising a future world traveler, a tiny history buff, a map-obsessed third grader, or simply a kid who asks approximately 400 questions before breakfast, here are 10 books worth adding to your shelf.
1. Maps by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel Mizieliński
Best for: Geography, cultures & kids who love to look closely (ages 7 - 12)
This is the kind of book you don’t necessarily read from beginning to end. Instead, kids can open to almost any page and start exploring. The illustrated maps are packed with landmarks, animals, foods, cultural traditions, famous people, and other details from countries around the world. It’s especially good for showing kids that a map can tell us much more than where something is—it can help tell the story of a place.
Keep exploring: Pick a country at random. Find three things on its map you’ve never seen before and look them up together.
Find Maps on Amazon →
2. Atlas of Adventures by Lucy Letherland
Best for: Travel, geography & armchair adventures (ages 6-10)
This illustrated atlas takes kids around the world through experiences, not just facts. They can imagine watching the Northern Lights, exploring the Amazon rainforest, celebrating festivals, seeing wildlife, and visiting incredible places across the globe. I love this one because it introduces geography through the question, "What could I experience there?”
Keep exploring: Have your child choose one adventure from the book and plan an imaginary trip. How would they get there? What would they pack? What would they want to see?
Find Atlas of Adventures on Amazon →
3. This Is How We Do It by Matt Lamothe
Best for: World cultures & everyday life (ages 4-8)
Sometimes learning about the world doesn’t need to start with famous landmarks. This Is How We Do It follows seven real children living in different countries and shows what their everyday lives look like—from what they eat to where they go to school. It’s a wonderful way to introduce kids to both the differences and the similarities between their lives and the lives of children around the world.
Keep exploring: Ask, “What was different from your day? What was surprisingly similar?”
Find This Is How We Do It on Amazon →
4. First Day Around the World by Ibi Zoboi
Best for: World cultures, school & everyday life (ages 4-9)
What does the first day of school look like for kids around the world? This book takes children into classrooms and communities across different countries, showing some of the ways kids get to school, what their schools look like, and what their first-day experiences are like. I love books like this because they give kids something familiar (their own experience of going to school) and use it as a starting point for learning about lives that may look very different from theirs. I read this to my third graders last year, and they loved it!
Keep exploring: Ask your child to compare one of the schools in the book with their own. What looks different? What feels familiar? And what would they want to know about the kids who go there?
Find First Day Around the World on Amazon →
5. The 50 States by Gabrielle Balkan
Best for: U.S. geography, history & wonderfully random facts (ages 7-12)
You don't have to travel internationally to start exploring. This oversized illustrated book is packed with information about all 50 states, including history, geography, people, landmarks, and plenty of unexpected facts. It’s another great book for browsing rather than reading straight through, and exactly the kind of book that can lead to an entirely unrelated question 20 minutes later. Which, around here, is considered a success. When we did oue New England States project my students loved using this book as a resource and would continue to read it throughout the year!
Keep exploring: Find your home state. What’s one thing you already knew and one thing that surprised you?
Find The 50 States on Amazon →
6. If You Come to Earth by Sophie Blackall
Best for: Big-picture thinking & understanding our world (ages 4-8)
Imagine you had to explain Earth to someone who had never been here. Where would you even begin? This beautiful picture book explores people, places, families, transportation, food, animals, and everyday life around our planet. It’s accessible for younger kids, but the questions behind it are big enough for older children too. This was also a favorite in my third grade classroom!
Keep exploring: Ask your child: “If someone came to Earth for the first time, what three things would you show them?” Their answers may tell you quite a lot about how they see the world.
Find If You Come to Earth on Amazon →
7. The Travel Book by Lonely Planet Kids
Best for: Future travelers & geography lovers (ages 8-12)
For the kid who wants to know a little bit about everywhere, this is a great jumping-off point. Countries are introduced through colorful illustrations, facts, landmarks, wildlife, culture, and other details that give kids a taste of what makes each place unique. This is also a fun one to pull out before a family trip or even before trying a restaurant from a country your child doesn't know much about.
Keep exploring: Let your child flip through until something catches their attention. Don't choose the country for them. Then find it on a globe or map and see where their curiosity takes you.
Find The Travel Book on Amazon →
8. How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman
Best for: Food, geography & understanding where things come from (ages 4-8)
What happens when you want to bake an apple pie…but the market is closed? Naturally, you travel around the world collecting the ingredients yourself. This is a playful introduction to geography, but it also opens up a much bigger conversation about something kids encounter every day: Where does our food actually come from?
Keep exploring: Pick something in your kitchen and investigate where its ingredients came from. How far did they travel before reaching you?
Find How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World on Amazon →
9. What a Wonderful World by Leisa Stewart-Sharpe
Best for: Natural wonders, exploration & asking “how?” (ages 6-10)
From enormous natural landscapes to extraordinary animals and environments, this book celebrates some of the incredible things that exist on our planet. It’s a great reminder that exploring the world isn't only about countries and cities. Curiosity can lead us into geology, weather, ecosystems, oceans, mountains, and all sorts of other directions.
Keep exploring: Choose one natural wonder from the book and find out how it formed. Then see if there’s anything remotely similar near where you live.
Find What a Wonderful World on Amazon →
10. Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers
Best for: Wonder, perspective & our place in the world (ages 3-8)
This feels like the perfect book to end the list. Here We Are introduces our planet from the biggest scale (land and sea, people and animals) and gradually brings the idea back to something very simple: we're all sharing this place. It's less of a traditional geography book and more of an invitation to notice the world you're living in. And really, that's where exploration begins.
Keep exploring: Go for a walk together and make a list of five things you've passed many times but have never really stopped to notice.
Find Here We Are on Amazon →
BONUS: The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be by Joanna Gaines
Best for: Curiosity, individuality & finding your place in the world (ages 4-9)
I included this ‘‘bonus” because how could I not?! I read this book during the first week of school and the last week of school every year! I also have an additional copy where each of my classes gets a new page spread to sign at the end of the year. It is one of my favorite books!
Exploring the world isn't only about discovering new places and learning about other people. It's also about discovering who you are and what you bring to it. Through a group of children building their own hot-air balloons, The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be celebrates different strengths, ideas, perspectives, and ways of doing things. It's a reminder that the world is more interesting because we don't all experience (or contribute to) it in the same way. And that feels like a pretty perfect place to end this list.
Keep exploring: Ask your child: What's something about you that you think the world needs more of? Then answer the question yourself, too.
Find The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be on Amazon →
That’s all for now!
Travel is an incredible way to learn about the world, but exploring doesn't have to mean getting on an airplane.
It can mean opening an atlas. Trying a food you've never eaten. Finding your house on a map. Reading the plaque you normally walk past. Looking up why your town has that strange name. Or letting a children's book lead you to a question neither you nor your child knows the answer to yet.
That's the kind of learning I want to encourage through Field Trip Collective. Because we don't need kids to memorize everything about the world. We need them to be curious enough to keep exploring it.
Thank you for reading my FIRST post, and keep following the journey.
Samantha
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