Children’s books are filled with journeys, from local walks and migration stories to fantasy adventures and voyages into space. There are journeys of discovery, journeys back in time, passages into the future, or trips to parallel worlds. There are stories of those seeking sanctuary, books charting the footsteps of famous explorers, or tales that wander through housing estates, woods or high streets.

Your journey

We want you to embark on your own creative adventures. We’re inviting you to make handmade books featuring a journey of your choice, either real or imaginary. In your book, you can include maps, pop up doors, suitcases, diary entries, letters or lists of equipment. 

First, let's look at some journey books made by some brilliant writers for the British Library:

Alice in Wonderland begins with a young girl named Alice who is having a dull day on a riverbank with her sister. Seeing a white rabbit in a waistcoat, she follows him down a rabbit hole and finds herself falling for miles down a tunnel-like well. This is her journey into Wonderland, a topsy turvy world of talking playing cards, tea-drinking creatures, and strange potions that make you grow as big as a giant or as tiny as a mouse.

In Billy and the Beast, Billy wanders through the forest where she discovers the Terrible Beast is gathering ingredients for his Terrible Soup. The recipe includes hedgehog, mice, fox tail and bunny rabbits. Using objects stored in her magnificent hair, Billy must stop the Beast from throwing all her furry friends into his bubbling cauldron.

To stay safe in the deep dark wood, a mouse makes up tales of a scary monster who has terrible claws and terrible teeth. But then the mouse himself meets the Gruffalo!

Will you encounter something scary on your journey? What will you do to stay safe? Make up stories like the mouse or find tools and tricks like Billy?

In John Agard’s Windrush Child, a little boy leaves the Caribbean, saying goodbye to his grandmother, to ‘mango mornings’ and to ‘storytime yard’. With his parents, he sets sail on Empire Windrush, a ship that will take him over a rolling ocean to ‘new beginnings’ in the UK. The book tells the tale of the real life ship, Empire Windrush, which brought hundreds of people from the Caribbean to the UK. They were invited by the British government to help rebuild Britain, which was so badly damaged during the Second World War.

In When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit Anna is forced to flee her Berlin home when Hitler comes to power. She must leave her friends and beloved toy rabbit. Her family is in grave danger, but they get out just in time. Author Judith Kerr herself escaped Nazi Germany and became a refugee in 1933. She wrote the book to tell her children her own remarkable story.

Perhaps you were born in a different place to the one you live in now. Maybe your parents or grandparents came from somewhere else. Perhaps you’ve met people who have different traditions to those you’ve experienced at home. Would you like to include elements of these stories in your book?

In Have you Seen the Magpie? a child named Duan’er travels through a Chinese landscape searching for a magpie which he hopes will bring him good luck. On the way he meets many people, including a group of sailors, a fortune teller, a teacher and a monk. At the end of his journey he becomes an artist and learns to document his experiences in a long illustrated scroll - a traditional Chinese artform.

If your journey takes place in your neighbourhood, you could describe the places where you belong, the places you found new friends, or the places that are special to you. What new things will you discover?

Race to the Frozen North depicts the real life African American explorer, Matthew Henson, and his fascinating and dangerous journey to the North Pole - one of the last unexplored corners on earth at the time. A navigator, craftsman and translator, Matthew was a heroic pioneer, who fought against the many prejudices he experienced.

Shackleton’s Journey tells the true life tale of Ernest Shackleton who, along with his crew, crossed treacherous seas and icy mountains on a perilous expedition to the Antarctic. The book provides details of their journey on the magnificent ship Endurance, including lists of equipment, the expedition maps and the cargo of 99 dogs.

In Viviane Schwarz’s How to be on the Moon, Anna and Crocodile must build a rocket and make sandwiches so they can journey to the moon. From there they look back at the almost impossibly beautiful earth and realise it misses them.

A map

What’s a map? Maps show us where to go

·  They can help us understand places

·  They can show us the world from the point of view of a flying bird looking down.

·  They can include symbols such as compasses or sea creatures

·  They can trace journeys mapping out who we meet, new experiences, things we try out

·  They can include a key

·  They can feature emotions, or sounds, or smells

In Azzi in Between, Azzi and her family are forced to escape from a war-torn country and seek refuge in a new land. Azzi must leave her grandmother and adjust to a different home and strange language. Her father brings beans from home but is unable to plant them as they have no garden in their new country. Resilient and imaginative, Azzi secretly takes a handful of the beans and sows them in the flowerbeds of her new school. She’ll later present the crops to her overjoyed family.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the children travel from our world into the fantastical land of Narnia, through a mysterious wardrobe. They first discover this portal during a game of hide and seek. After stepping into the wardrobe, they walk through rows of soft coats and then into the crunching snow of Narnia’s woods. There they discover a land of mythical animals ruled by the tyrannical White Witch.

Will your journey begin with a portal? A magic door, an extraordinary cave, a dark tunnel, or a surprising gate….?

You may not use any of this material for commercial purposes. All material is available for educational purposes only, unless otherwise stated.

Billy and the Beast by Nadia Shireen. © Nadia Shireen, 2019 – Jonathan Cape, Penguin Random House Children’s. Except as otherwise permitted by your national copyright laws this material may not be copied or distributed further.

Original sketches for The Gruffalo, 1999. © Axel Scheffler

Windrush Child Text, © 2002 John Agard Illustrations © 2022 Sophie Bass From JOHN AGARD’S WINDRUSH CHILD Written by John Agard and illustrated by Sophie Bass Reproduced by permission of Walker Books Ltd, London, SE11 5HJ

Original sketches for When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, 1971, by Judith Kerr. Finished illustrations copyright © Kerr-Kneale Productions Ltd 1971. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. Please credit the copyright holder when reusing this work.

Azzi in Between, 2012, by Sarah Garland © Sarah Garland. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. Please credit the copyright holder when reusing this work.

Our Journey by Joseph Coelho, illustrated by Richard Johnson, 2023 ©

Have You Seen Have you Seen the Magpie by Dai Yun, illustrated by Yu Rong, 2023, © Dai Yun and Yu Rong.

Shackleton's Journey by William Grill, © William Grill & Flying Eye Books. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. Please credit the copyright holder when reusing this work.

Original sketches for How to be on the Moon, 2019, by Viviane Schwarz. © Viviane Schwarz.

Illustration for Tyger by SF Said, illustrated by Dave Mckean. © Dave McKean.

Sketches for Totally Chaotic History: Ancient Egypt Gets Unruly, 2024, by Rikin Parekh. © Rikin Parekh. All rights reserved.

Think about what you’d like to pack in your suitcase or put in your pocket. Illustrate the case and items inside it. If you’re going on a journey to get a job done, make a list of the equipment you’ll need.

Does your journey require transport? What features will it have? Draw a magic train on tracks or a bicycle to help youon which to whizz through streets.

What aspects of your adventure do you want to record in your journal or tell your friends or family about? The food you ate, the people you met, the things you discovered?

Add a pop up door to your book. Where will your portal lead you?

Each child was given a crew member from Shackleton’s Endurance and they wrote in role. The books include diary entries, maps, dog adoption certificates and letters. The children made marbled paper for endpapers, bound the books in leather, and created a compass seal to decorate.

Now let's find out about the journeys that exist in some of our favourite books.

SF Said's Tyger is set in a parallel version of 18th-century London, where slavery was never abolished. A boy named Adam Alhambra must navigate the frightening city, threatened by a powerful villain and racist mobs. Then he meets a mythical Tyger who is trying to save humanity from itself.