Book Review: Wanderlust and Lipstick Traveling With Kids

This is a review of a the book Wanderlust and Lipstick: Traveling with Kids by Leslie Forsberg and Michelle Duffy. This book was generously given to me by fellow blogger Michelle Duffy, also known as Wandermom over on Wanderlust and Lipstick. Both Michelle, and her publisher Beth Whitman are good friends of mine, but of course the opinions expressed in this review are all my own. I also contributed a section on car seat safety to the book. If you buy a product by clicking through to Amazon from DeliciousBaby I will receive a small commission.

I first met Michelle Duffy by phone - or I almost did - she had emailed a request for interviews about family travel to a local moms group, and we scheduled a time after my kids would be in bed to chat. That night, a few months pregnant with baby Eilan and exhausted after a long day with the kids, I fell asleep in my daughter's room and the phone went unanswered. It was months before we managed to hook up again, and when we did I was interested to hear how the book was shaping up.

A key part of Michelle and Leslie's approach to the book was to interview countless moms about their experiences traveling with their own kids. That gives Traveling With Kids a broad perspective, especially when it comes to dealing with different personality types and challenges on the road. Short stories from real moms, sprinkled throughout the book, also make what could easily have been a dry and pragmatic handbook more engaging.

Traveling With Kids does a good job of covering the basics (while delving in deep on the important topics like surviving a plane flight). It can be tough to dive deep in a book covering this much ground, so Traveling With Kids provides websites and other resources for more detail where it is needed. For example, a section about traveling with breast-feeding when you travel gives practical advice about breastfeeding in different countries, adjusting to jetlag when you are breastfeeding, and traveling with baby bottles. Then it referres readers to La Leche League for more detailed information about breastfeeding in each country you might visit. You could imagine the book going deeper, and in some places recommending specific products or services, but I have yet to see a more thorough and helpful resource to help parents plan their first few trips with kids.

I recommend Wanderlust and Lipstick: Traveling with Kids to parents who are just getting started traveling with their kids, or who struggle with each trip and want some extra guidance. There are some great tips here, and I learned a few new tricks too!

Filed Under: book-review

0 comments | Posted on January 27, 2010 | Save to del.icio.us

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