Keeping a child occupied while traveling is not always easy, especially when you’re faced with long flights, long bus rides, or boring interstate car rides. Or even worse, delays waiting around for any of these to start. Sure, you can just give up and let them zone out with DVDs or electronic games, but you know deep  inside that all that passive activity where their brain is turned off can’t be good all the time.

I’ve been consistently happy with the ones for kids put out by Chronicle Books. As I noted in this review last year for the Julius Pop-up Sticker Activity Book, when these say “hours of fun,” it really turns out to be true.

When my daughter got this extension of the Worst-Case Scenario book as a gift, she devoured it for days on end, reading passages aloud and pointing to the pictures when she came upon a funny one. Besides this Weird Junior Edition—which explains how to defeat Medusa and how to keep a vampire away among other survival tips—there’s a new Gross Junior Edition as well. This one covers bloody noses, “gas leaks,” barfing, and other embarrassments. At less than $8 at Amazon right now, it’s a steal.

My 10-year-old daughter has also bee loving this Uglydoll School Planner. It’s not related to any specific year and can be started at any time, so it’s a good gift for whenever. It’s full of funny stickers for different events, plus its spiral bound and sturdy—with an elastic band to hold it together with additional papers even.

She smiles every time she looks at this planner and I have to admit I do too. At the moment we’re living in a foreign country and she’s going to school in a foreign language, so it’s nice to have things like this along to make it a little easier.

See more from the Chronicle kids line of books and activity kits, including the new MoMa Modern Play Family kit for hipster parents of young children.

See more reviews of travel books for the road.

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