- Mission London

Not even a book I didn't like it at all

A great book, we used this on a family vacation. It ended up being our #1 guide to London. It had lots of great info and the kids were really motivated and excited to explore and learn more about the city. Great size, it's not too big, it fits in a bag and is light enough to carry around. My only piece of feedback would be to include a map in future editions. We've used these books for other cities too and will definitely use it again if we go somewhere new.

We've used several books from the Mission scavenger hunt series, to the extent that they've become part of our trip planning and we're disappointed if a city doesn't have a corresponding book. Mission London did exactly what we hoped, getting our kids genuinely excited about the city and engaged in our trip before we even left home. The scavenger hunt format is really clever. Instead of dragging reluctant kids through historical sites, they're actively searching for gargoyles, coats of arms, and other details they learned about in the book. The gamification element (earning points for spotting specific features) turns sightseeing into a game and an occupied kid is a happy kid, in my experience. If you're traveling with kids and want them to be engaged in what they're seeing, this series is fantastic. Highly recommended!

This is the second book in the series I have read by Catherine Aragon. The first was Mission Washington which was just as engaging. Having been born and brought up in London, I was curious to read the latest excellent guidebook with a spy twist for children to use and accomplish missions when exploring London. It is brilliantly illustrated and helps to bring both the sights and history of London alive. As a child I’d have loved this! The premise is built around sets of missions and scavenger hunts for your children to carry out, with an engaging way of combining London’s tourist attractions with a thrilling challenge. The book sets tasks throughout and if they complete enough of them they can then become a Secret International Agency (SIA) Special Agent. I particularly loved the James Bond connection. I downloaded Mission London to Kindle on my iPad, the graphics are excellent and having shown the book to the younger members of my family they are now demanding a trip to London!

We used both the London and Rome books with our kids (7-10 years old) and they were both big hits. The scavenger hunt style is really engaging and helps kids stay interested. The books tend to focus on historical sites that might not be as naturally interesting for kids and helps stave off potential boredom in those places. As an adult, it helped me notice small details I likely would have overlooked as well.

We bought the Florence and Amsterdam versions of this excellent series before as a surprise for our daughter when making trips abroad. These were unexpected successes and worked really well; it made her visits to the Uffizi and the Rijksmuseum, otherwise torturous to young children, a much more exciting and memorable experience and at the same time it didn’t totally emerge her i.e. it left lots of room for interaction. Also in those cases it helped us as parents to plan and schedule our trip. We live in London so we’ll have plenty of opportunity to complete the different parts of the book. The puzzles and setting is generally entertaining and challenging while there is a material educational element as well. Highly recommended to families with young children aged 7 to 11. Although her younger 5-year old brother liked to help out with most of the challenges as well, like finding statues and details in paintings.