I am not an avid traveller by today's terms (even pre-pandemic), but I have done my fair share. I was drawn to this memoir because of the unique perspective of travelling with children in tow.
In the author's position as a travel journalist, she gets offers to stay and write about those experiences. This also means that she decides to make it a norm to travel with her kids.
Each story is at a different time, with kids at varying stages. In the first narrative, she is pregnant for the first time, followed by a trip with one toddler and then with two and the next with all three of her sons. Each is a different location with its own pros and cons. It is almost a bite-sized view of the trip, with the highlight being mentioned in the beginning, followed by the entire story.
The ending warmed me to the entire book, even more than all the individual stories. It shows the circle of life, the growing up of individual children and the changes in their family as a whole. It felt more profound and added a layer of seriousness to the experience. That said, I felt like I wanted more from each trip or more in general. The book is a quick read for the most part, and I went in expecting something else, which affected my reading. Although, if one goes in knowing they will only get a few days in each location and few instances within those days, a reader would appreciate the book more.
This is not a self-help book on how to travel with kids. It does not even claim to be, it is what the author learnt over her journeys as an individual and as a family, and it is unique in its own way. I would highly recommend it to people who enjoy reading about different cultures and travel.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

This is a short travel book. The author and her family travel to far flung places. Each chapter is a place they visited and a lesson learned. Since each chapter is short you never get a feel for the country. After a few chapters each trip seems the same. They hire a private guide, see some of the country and return to their five star resort. As an armchair travel book it felt like a rushed bus tour. It is a quick short read.

I love reading travel books because of the chance to live vicariously through the author's experience. This one was exceptionally well-written. Documenting a series of family trips at a variety of ages, Wickers began each chapter with the location, the ages of her children at the time of travel, and a short "journal entry" type intro to the chapter. This allowed for both the perspective of how she felt in the moment as well as her memories of the trip that she covered in the chapter. Each chapter was descriptive and unique enough that when I pulled my phone out to read, I would turn to my husband and say, alright, now I am on my way to Cuba, etc. I will definitely be on the lookout for more travel books from Wickers :)

Rating: 3 stars

This was a quick fun read about the adventures of a family during their travels to several destinations in the world. I loved each story, the fun moments, the descriptions of the places and the variety of cultures included in the memoir. The most important message here is family values and the importance of spending quality time with the people we love. Recommended for lovers of travel and adventures.

Thanks to NetGalley for this review copy!
This was hilarious! I love to read family travel adventures, even though I'm a poor traveler, and I enjoyed this one very much. Well written, so funny, plus learning good lessons too. Highly recommended.

This is the story of a traveller who becomes a mother and raises her children to become travellers as well. Each chapter focuses on a different location and a different life lesson or theme she taught her children (or at times, her children taught her). It is a fairly quick and easy read, that is light hearted and brings the reader interesting family moments set all over the world. Definitely a must read for travel lovers and anyone thinking about embarking on an adventure with a toddler in tow!

Travel memoir that takes the reader to life-affirming adventures around the world.

It is a wonderful travel memoir that allows to travel to faraway places through the pages AND a heartwarming family story. In this book the author allows us to join her adventurous and sometimes hilarious experiences.

Kate shares stories about travel she and her family - husband and three sons, has done over two decades. But this is not told in typical diary entries, like "went there, saw that, ate some, and met someone". These stories open up to way more than that! 😍 It is a tale of the family growing together, learning from their experience, discovering the world and themselves.

I enjoyed the way the author structured the book. I think presenting each travel story as a separate essay that tells a tale not only about place and time but about shared experience and lessons learned was a good approach. This book is everything I want from a travel memoir! 🥳

The only thing that I wish there were more is about what it actually takes to travel with a baby/ kid/ teenager. This book is not the one that will give practical advice (I got a feeling from the synopsis that it will). Despite that, I enjoyed this and will suggest this to anyone interested in travel stories.

I found this book to be quite delightful! The author is a wonderful storyteller who makes each of her destinations come fully to life. She also has a terrific sense of humor and an ability to describe the realities of being a parent. At times, I smiled or cringed remembering what it was like to have a young baby. At others, I had to remind myself that the author made it through a difficult experience because, of course, she had published this book.

Ms. Wickers is an adventurer. She worked as a travel writer and loved exotic places before becoming a parent and has happy memories of travels with her family when she was a child. The author wanted to show her own children amazing places and took her first son on his first trip when he was just three months old. Some of the destinations that the growing family visited included Israel and Jordan, Borneo, Sri Lanka, Japan and Cubs. This is a family that is ready to take on all that life offers.

I recommend this enjoyable book. It will be liked by travelers, both armchair and real, as well as parents. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this fun read.

This title will be published on 22 Mar 2022.

Kate Wickers has managed to write a delightful and inspiring book about travel with children. . Kate and her dear husband bring an unflappable attitude to travel with their three young boys. From calming crying babies on long flights to getting kids to roll with bad smells and strange foods, Kate has an answer for all. If you can't travel now, this is a great armchair read.

Shape of a Boy is at once a wonderful travel memoir to far-off places all around the world that allows you to vicariously travel through the pages while travel is not possible, and a story about family and three young boys growing up, learning the important lessons in life. This is the story of Kate, her husband Neil, and three sons Josh, Ben and Freddie, who have each been incredibly lucky to be able to see all these places, and to have done so as a family.

The pages of the book are filled with fun stories, a bit of mischief here and there, exotic adventures and everything else you would want from a travel memoir. Unlike some other travel memoirs, that can quickly become a listing of 'and then I/we went here and this happened', there is more to this book. There is a lot of warmth, plenty of life lessons and significant growing up for each of the family members. A great little book if you are in the mood to be transported to a different place for a little bit.