This Spring I will be taking a 9 yr old girl on her first trip to New York City. The trip will be her Christmas Present, but because of the four month delay I want to present her with some representational gifts on Christmas Day. Gifts that she can enjoy in the following four months which will keep her mind on the approaching trip and get her excited about it.
So, here’s why I’m posting in Cafe Society and not IMHO or MPSIMS:
Books!
I need book recommendations!
I want to give her a few New York books for Christmas. These can be Fiction placed in New York or NYC Guide Books for Kids or Broadway/Theatre Themed books for Kids or anything that you can think of to prepare a 9 yr old girl for a trip to NYC.
Try Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series, especially the first, So You Want to Be a Wizard.
No child ought to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art without having read E. L. Konigsberg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
I just found this book that looks like it’ll be very helpful: Storied City: A Children’s Book Walking-Tour Guide to New York City. It should be especially fun to plan to read some books involving the landmarks and parts of town you already know you’d like to see.
And make sure you ask your local children’s librarian! They’ll know what’s in your local collection, and have access to lots of resources you can use to find more books to make waiting for your trip exciting (or at least as exciting as waiting gets).
The Brooklyn Bridge (a kids’ book that tells how this 19th century engineering marvel was built).
Waterhouse Hawkings’ Amazing Dinosaurs (the true story of the early attempt to create what became the American Museum of Natural History, complete with all sorts of Tammany Hall political shenanagans – but still mostly donosaurs).
Once the kid has read these books she’ll be ready for my now-famous sightseeing thread!