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Scavenger Guides Chicago: An Interactive Travel Guide For Kids ReviewWhen travelling, kids don't want to see things, they want to do things. Scavenger Guides Chicago addresses that need by offering a guidebook designed and written for kids. This guidebook is meant to be used more than consulted and, ideally, become a lasting memento of a trip to the windy city. A travel guide, game, journal, photography course, and souvenir all in one.
Kids score points for each question they answer correctly or activity / experience they complete--ten points for finishing a slice of deep dish pizza for instance--and they try to earn as many as possible for the trip. At the end, their accumulated score rewards them one of three rankings--Travel Guide, Travel Adventurer, or World Explorer--for which certificates have been included in the book to be authenticated with adult signatures.
The narrative and site descriptions are informative but concise and, more importantly, written for children. The chapter on taking photographs is more involved but well-constructed; many adults would benefit from its well-articulated basic hints. The accompanying black-and-white photographs--I suspect color would have made the cost of the book prohibitive--are set at an angle, an intentional quirkiness suitable for its intended audience. The overall layout of the pages is nice to look at and the amount of white space makes them inviting even to those adverse to reading. Wide margins encourage spontaneous note taking.
The chapters are arranged by topic, such as Buildings and Landmarks and Parks and Outdoor Search, rather than geographic itinerary. The guide recommends reading the book prior to the trip for planning purposes. I would go further and say that the simplicity of this guide might make it a better tool for sketching out an itinerary than conventional guidebooks. Better yet, the kids can get involved. One chapter I'm sure would be popular is, Chicago Animal Safari, which nicely combines the two zoos and the Shedd Aquarium.
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An animal safari in Chicago? You bet! Chicago is a great place to see animals! Take in a dolphin show at Shedd Aquarium's Oceanarium, one of the city's most popular attractions. Then get a diver's eye view of sharks in Wild Reef. Lincoln Park Zoo is one of the oldest in the United States. Stare into the eyes of a lowland gorilla, try your hand at milking a dairy cow, then ride the Endangered Species Carousel. Lincoln Park Zoo is open 365 days a year and admission is free! Brookfield Zoo, in the Chicago suburb of Brookfield, is one of the largest zoos in the United States. It was the first zoo in America to exhibit giant pandas!
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A one-paragraph description on each destination follows, along with several fill-in-the-blank questions. These are relatively easy things to complete, depending on the child's age, but pose enough challenge to demand some effort.
Scavenger Guide Chicago is one of a planned series on American cities--a Washington, D.C. version is available--and so there will be generic elements. In fact, these make up about one-third of the book and include: blank pages for notes after each chapter; lined pages for journal entries for fourteen days, along with a sample; pages for parents to create their own clues and scores and a page to accumulate the scores; the certificates; the aforementioned photography guide; and of course introductory pages on the guidebook itself and recommendations on how to use it. This is a first edition, implying, as with other guidebook series, updated versions will be published in the future to reflect destination changes as well as, presumably, improvements based on feedback.
A website supports the book and its users / readers. It contains a blog and a feature to create a Digital Story, along with basic site information. For the type of book it is, it would be nice to have distinct web pages for kids. Perhaps this will happen once the Scavenger Guide builds up some steam.
It's unfortunate the author did not insist on providing a hardcopy because I cannot comment on ergonomic aspects, such as the type of paper and what writing implements would work best, ease of carrying around in daypack, weight, etc. Clearly, such a book would get tossed around and would have to survive page-tearing winds, puddles, and other elements. The effect of the occasional widow and orphan is hard to assess with the electronic version; I noticed them but might not have with the physical book. I don't know if the certificate pages are perforated or not (but I doubt it).
Scavenger Guides Chicago is targeted to parents and children but to me a natural and possibly larger audience would be schools and clubs that arrange trips to major cities. True, the guide seems geared for longer stays, but there may be a larger market there. I could see value in a customizable version too, something that's more feasible with self-publishing.
While the contents fulfill the intent, the ultimate proof of concept will be to look at a copy at the conclusion of a trip. If still in new condition, then perhaps it hasn't been used properly, the trip was bad, or the concept is off. A tattered, marked up, saved copy, on the other hand, would be a clear indicator of success.
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