Learning about foreign countries and cultures can delight and inspire our children for a lifetime.  My own experience as a child doing a research project about Norway fueled a life-long interest in that country and a visit there remains on my bucket list!  Carole P. Roman‘s If You Were Me and Lived in…. series offers a delightful walk across the globe for you and your children, so I am very happy that she sent me some books so I could review them for you!

This award-winning collection manages to engage, entertain, inform, and delight the reader with a wide spectrum of sights and sounds from the featured nation.  Each book typically tells about the food, families, pasttimes, schools, toys, money, culture, and climate in a way that’s conversational, and also gets the reader thinking and responding to the information. One of the things I appreciated was the pronunciation guides.  I can easily imagine a family reading these books together and trying out new names from each culture, and learning a few vocabulary words from the new language.  Sounding less “gringo” is a bonus!  🙂   I also enjoyed that the illustrations are full-color, and often combine actual photographs with the friendly artwork.

Officially aimed at ages 5-8, I believe these books will be enjoyed by your older children as well.  I had my 14, 16, and 17 year old sons take a look, and they all enjoyed reading through a few of the books, and said that they thought they were well-done and informative, though certainly geared toward somewhat younger readers.  I read through my entire stack of If You Were Me books, and learned so many things that I did not already know!  I’m sharing some of those insights this week on Instagram this week, so come check those out for some fun.  

As I often say, you never know what will inspire your child and spark a flame of interest and exploration, so it is well worth it to provide a nice range of interesting and appealing resources and experiences for our children to draw from.  These books would be a wonderful addition to your home library because they provide a nice starting point for becoming more aware of how people in other places live.

Countries included in this series (aff):  Italy, Australia, Mexico, India, Cuba, South Korea, France, Scotland, Germany, Greece, Russia, Portugal, Kenya, Turkey, Peru, China, Hungary, Norway, Egypt, Israel, Poland, and Brazil.

Carole P. Roman has many other books for homeschoolers as well, including her If You Were Me and Lived In…History Series!  I can enthusiastically recommend her work to other homeschool families.  I hope you’ll check her books out!

@enrichment_studies #Inverted Carole P Roman's book series "If you were me and lived in" is a terrific way for your whole family to learn about other countries and cultures. Highly recommended! #ad #homeschool #homeschooling #homeschoolmom #howtohomeschool ♬ original sound – Erica Johns: How to Homeschool

@enrichment_studies #Inverted You and your kids will love these excellent books by Carole P Roman. You can find them all on A*mazon. #Homeschool #homeschooling #homeschoolmom #howtohomeschool #ad ♬ original sound – Erica Johns: How to Homeschool