CHILDREN'S ACTIVITY ATLAS

A learning tool for budding geographers, this first world atlas comes with hundreds of stickers, a sheet of detachable postcards and other reinforcement materials.

With the exception of the Arctic and Antarctica paired on facing pages, the brightly colored regional maps come one per spread. Blanked-out adjacent territories and generous quantities of surrounding ocean provide additional space for short descriptive overviews, boxes of general facts and grids of national flags to match with corresponding stickers from the back. The maps feature country labels, national borders (including Wales and Scotland for the U.K. but not state boundaries for the U.S.), capitals and major cities, color-keyed biomes, and small labeled images of select flora, fauna, sports, and natural or industrial products. On each map at least one of these images is grayed out as a cue for additional sticker matching. The maps look crowded but not bewilderingly busy, and they are current enough to include South Sudan. Along with a page of sendable postcards with preprinted fill-in-the-blank messages (“We started in the north, visiting the _____ Tower in Paris….”), a “Passport” in a front pocket contains map-reading practice questions and even more sticker-placing opportunities.

Unsuitable for classroom or library shelves but serviceable for solo use.