Food for the curious mind

Not For Parents: The Travel Book
By Michael Dubois, Katri Hilden and Jane Price
Published by Lonely Planet
Available at Asia Books
Reviewed by Manote Tripathi

 


Hot on the heels of the phenomenal success of the best-selling “Travel Book”, the world’s leading travel content provider Lonely Planet has tapped into the children’s book segment with the launch of the “Not-For-Parents” travel book series designed to inspire young adventurers aged eight to 11 to discover amazing sights in the world.
The series initially comprises four books devoted to four of the world’s most gorgeous cities, London, Paris, Rome and New York, launched together with the world guide for youngsters titled “Not For Parents: The Travel Book”, which aims to mimic the success of “The Travel Book”.
“Not For Parents: The Travel Book” in coffee-table format is truly a wealth of knowledge about 200 countries in the world, illustrated with amazing photos, drawings and great graphics. The book’s not designed strictly like other Lonely Planet guidebooks, but is more a repository of facts and figures about the countries, illuminated with lavish illustrations. Though intended for the kids, the guide could be enjoyed by adults too, but you might want to read it in private!
While normal Lonely Planet guides brim with a wealth of information and less photos, “Not For Parents: The Travel Book” provides you with just a terse overview of every country’s major sights, tribes, “hideous” history, culture, arts and folklore to entertain and educate.
The format is one page per country with lots of photos. Along with essential info (capital city, flag, lingo and currency) comes weird and wonderful facts that inspire kids to hit the road and explore the world, and will fascinate some adults who love hideous facts and history, and a read through takes only an hour or so. This is the kind of book that will make children enjoy geography, history, politics and culture classes even more.  
What’s truly interesting is that the editorial team manages to unearth unusual info about every country on Earth. For a start, where can you find the loudest money in the world? Which country serves Iguana soup? Where’s the original HQ of the pirates of the Caribbean? Where on earth can the foolish follies be found? What’s the only work in the world that Michelangelo signed?
The four smaller “Not For Parents” city guides, all written by Klay Lamprell, have the same pictorial format, but with more details about the cities’ history, people and culture.
The Rome guide tells us what sort of people went to gladiator schools, what was beneath the ground around Rome in ancient times, how to fight with wild animals, how people went drag racing Roman style and why Rome isn’t Reme.
The London guide explores cheap and common English grub plus the sort of stuff people ate during WWII, introduces Cockney rhyming slangs, profiles some notorious and famous kings and queens, explains the mummies at the British Museum, traces the locations featured in the shooting of the Harry Potter films and chronicles British punk.
The Paris guide is packed with strange and hideous facts: whose heads were chopped off by the Guillotine, the recipes for famous snail dishes, the catacombs of six million corpses, the tours of the sewers, ghost stations of the Metro and some of the scenic cemeteries.
The New York guide fills you in on why it’s the Big Apple, who’s John FitzGerald, the Battle of Brooklyn, the Elephant Hotel, the stuff at Ground Zero, the man behind the imaginary Sesame Street, the gadgets carried by New York cops, NYC inventions, little Italy and the secrets of Grand Central station.
Here are the books to read and look at in this festive season. If you’re looking for good gift ideas for kids, these books are ideal. Buy them early and you get to read them too.



 
Test yourself

See if you can answer some of these questions.

1.    Which country do you find the fish called “the poor man’s lobster?
2.    Where can you find the fennec, the world’s smallest fox?
3.    Where can you find a tomb that used to hold 80,000 cats?
4.    What and where’s the animal that has stripes like zebra but is related to the giraffe? Its tongue is so long it can wash its eyelids and clean out its ears.
5.    What and where’s the African tribe that eats blood from living animal?
6.    Where to see women wear lip plates?  
7.    What’s the name of the fruit that looks like banana?
8.    Which country uses a 100 trillion dollar note?
9.    What and where is a small living dinosaur?
10.    Where is the rainiest place on earth?  
11.    Which country has the longest name of its capital city?

ANSWERS
1. The angler-fish in Iceland
2. Algeria
3. Egypt
4. The okapi in Congo
5. The Samburu in Kenya
6. The Mursi women in Ethiopia
7. Plantains
8. Zimbabwe
9. The Lesothosaurus in Lesotho
10. Cherrapungee in India
11. Thailand