Knowing there would be heaps of down time in the car etc, I brought about 30 books for E and P to read and half a dozen big fat ones for J. They’ve gone through those and we restocked in London. There is a downside to this. Some books I have had to confiscate to limit the number of re-readings: The Outsiders (5 times each for E and P must be enough – time to move on?) and 4 volumes of Harry Potter, which they have already read more than once in NZ anyway and which we grabbed in London, are about to go the same way. J has more variety with his newspaper reading and war novels.
The children are perfectly happy in the car reading, the difficulty lies in getting them to stop reading and look out the window, or even upon occasions get out of the car. Sometimes they even get into the car before we are ready to leave just so they can get a few extra minutes in. E and P will return to NZ with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the life and times of Harry Potter, but no memory at all of European geography.
And anyway, no-one will play guess the person with them any more - who wants to when the answer is always some walk-on character who appears once on page 546 of book 5 in the series?
- Annie
We just stick to guessing what race the person driving the next oncoming car will be.