Teaching Kids Art Through Picture Books

There I was, sitting in our new 1985 Nissan Sentra, aged 22 and married all of twenty-four hours. I was full of optimism and giddy enthusiasm. Mike was driving, and I held the map. Full of complicated folds and teeny tiny lines, it was a puzzle to figure out. Thankfully, I could do it-because somewhere along the line, I’d learned to read a map. We made it all the way to our North Carolina honeymoon, and thirty-eight years later, I still get excited about road trips with my husband-- and reading maps.

You never know when maps will come in handy on an adventure, so it’s important to help your kids learn how to read them. Besides that, maps can aid kids in developing a mental picture of their place in the world, be it in their home, church, city, or country.

Today’s picture book about maps, Footsteps on the Map, by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Osaka Drachkovska, is interesting because it tells of two kids starting at different places and meeting in the middle.

That’s a fun concep...