Gift Guide 2016 (No. 4): For the Jet Setter
December 13, 2016 § 2 Comments
Before my kids were in school full time, we used to spend the occasional rainy day at the airport (or, as my son would call it, the “airplane port”). We would drop the car in long-term parking, ride the shuttle bus to the terminal (itself an experience), and enjoy a picnic lunch while pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the runway. After a few hours, we’d toss our trash, head back to our car, and return home.
Before becoming a parent, I had always done my best to avoid air travel unless absolutely necessary. If you had told me that parenting would drive me willingly into the throes of a cavernous space with crowds of people and humming machines—plus two toddling kiddos in tow—I would have thought, thanks, but I’ll stick with raincoats and a quick jaunt around the block. But I discovered: take away the stress of travel and the cumbersome bags, and the airport is like a built-in babysitter.
For children, the multisensory experience of an airport is nothing short of enthralling. It’s not just the giant steel cylinders roaring down the runways before effortlessly lifting into the air. It’s also the conveyor belts that whisk bags into secret rooms behind rubber flaps; the moving walkways that shuttle people around like giant chess games; the horns from golf carts that fly by on glossy floors with collapsed wheelchairs in the back; and the fuel trucks and food trucks and baggage trains, which together descend on waiting air crafts outside the window.
It’s not just the smell of coffee, which intermingles with re-warmed pizza, brake grease, and pink liquid soap. It’s also the sounds of loudspeakers and wailing babies and cell phone users, which intensify to a drumming buzz in the back of our heads. And it’s the dazzling rainbow of clothes and skin colors, the amalgamation of sizes and accents, which teaches our children about the diversity that inhabits their planet.
Short of regularly taking your kids to the airport to get their fix, you can read them Lisa Brown’s The Airport Book (Ages 2-6), the newest—and, especially if you’re a parent, loveliest—picture book on the subject. If visiting an airport in real life is an assault on one’s senses, then experiencing Brown’s book is anything but. Don’t get me wrong: my children used to beg me multiple times a day to read them Richard Scarry’s A Day at the Airport or Brian Biggs’ Everything Goes: In the Air (which I blogged about here); but while I would oblige, I secretly prayed for someone to write and illustrate something that wouldn’t make my head spin. It turns out what I really yearned for were Lisa Brown’s soft India ink and watercolors, her subtle humor, and her refreshing portrayal of contemporary jet setters.
The Airport Book follows a mixed-race family of four on a day of travel to and from the airport, beginning in a taxi outside their city apartment and concluding on a tropical beach in their grandfather’s car. Despite the personal connection we feel to the family—when, say, the mother notices that her daughter’s beloved stuffed monkey is missing and glares daggers at the father, “Did you forget to pack Monkey?”—the narrative itself feels universal, designed as a kind of step-by-step introduction to air travel from the mouth of the girl’s knowing older brother.
Targeted at the preschool and kindergarten crowd, the boy’s narrative is matter of fact, but it’s also oddly comforting, almost lyrical, in its ability to impose order on the surrounding chaos.
You drive on the highway to where the ground is really flat. There are lots of people saying lots of goodbyes. Sometimes they hug. Sometimes they cry. They have big bags on wheels and smaller bags on their shoulders and backs. Sometimes you can tell exactly what is packed inside the bags. Sometimes it is a mystery.
Despite its title, several pages of the book are spent inside the commercial airplane that’s bound for the family’s (unnamed) tropical destination. As with the airport scenes, Brown’s pictures are more than just a backdrop for the boy’s descriptions of safety announcements and turbulence: they provide countless opportunities (phew, since you’ll be reading the book countless times) to notice what’s happening with the different passengers, from dozing business travelers to squirming babies. Speech bubbles peppered throughout give further clues about these sub-plots.
Many of the best picture books ask the child to do some work, and Brown’s readers will be rewarded for following the fate of the little sister’s stuffed monkey in a parallel plot. It turns out that the striped monkey is not forgotten (as the parents suppose) but packed in the checked baggage. In moments reminiscent of Mo Willems’ well-known Knuffle Bunny, only the toddler herself spies Monkey’s tail sticking out of the suitcase, as it is being sent down the conveyor belt and later loaded into the cargo hull; and yet, her refrain of “Monkey Monkey Monkey!” is mistaken for one of bereavement. Only the reader is privy to the monkey’s secret and the little girl’s delight.
Whether your holiday travel takes you down a runway or not, here’s hoping that the unexpected delight of air travel follows your children all year long.
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What to Read to Your Kids 
Thank you!
On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 5:07 AM, What to Read to Your Kids wrote:
> thebookmommy posted: “Before my kids were in school full time, we used to > spend the occasional rainy day at the airport (or, as my son would call it, > the “airplane port”). We would drop the car in long-term parking, ride the > shuttle bus to the terminal (itself an experience), ” >
I loved your description of your rainy day airport visits. It brought back wonderful memories of my visits to the airports with my grandfathers many years ago! It’s a lovely thing to remember on this cold December morning. Thank you, Melissa! And the book sounds great. I’ve added it to my library list. ☺️