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Are we there yet.

You have heard it from the back seat. You will hear it again in twenty minutes. This book exists so that next time, you have somewhere to point.

100 games. One pencil. That is the whole kit.

Nothing in this book needs scissors, glue, tape, a flat surface, a second color, or a grown-up. The person driving never plays — not one game, not one time. Every game says at the top when to play it, who it is for (one kid or two), and how it ends. When a game keeps score, kids add up their own marks and say their number out loud. Nobody loses in this book. It counts what you found, not who won.

It goes in the same order the drive does.

The chapters run the way the trip runs. Before the wheels turn — in the driveway, while the car is being packed. Leaving town — through the streets you know, until the signs stop being familiar. Highway hours — the long open middle where the boring really sets in. Then the hard one: the chapter for the minutes outside the car, the gas stations and the parking lots and the one museum that was supposed to be quick. Rain on the windows has its own chapter. The way home has its own chapter, and it is not a rehash of the way there.

Real games, with real rules.

License plate games with names for what you spot. Word games that work at 70 miles an hour. Scavenger hunts for things you can actually see from a moving car. Counting games, guessing games, drawing games for when the car stops, and quiet games for when it does not. Doodle zones where the only instruction is the page itself. Every game is written so a 6-to-10-year-old can run it alone or with the kid sitting next to them.

What this book is not

• Not a screen. It never needs charging and it never runs an ad.
n• Not a book of questions for parents to read out. The kid holds the pencil. The kid runs the game.
n• Not babyish. A ten-year-old will not find 'sing the alphabet' on these pages, and a six-year-old can still play most of it.
n• Not a one-trip book. The plates change every trip. The games do not wear out.

Answers are in the back — every puzzle, in its own chapter, so the checking is a kid's job too.

Write in it. Draw in it. Bend the corners. It is theirs now, and there is always another long road coming.

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Kids Road-Trip Activity Book

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