One of my favorite things to do as a child was pore over the family's atlas, a huge red tome weighing nearly as much as I did. I'd drag it out on to the living room floor and lie there flipping pages, lost in the enormity of the world so far away yet right there at my fingertips.
I had forgotten how much pleasure I derived from that until I read about the upcoming release of the 12th edition of the Philips Children's Atlas. Surely my kids could use the same rich experience I had of discovering the world via the glossy pages of an atlas, couldn't they? The fact that the atlas is published by what appears to be a nice old English couple makes it all the more appealing. I actually own one of their travel maps of Europe and it's pretty good, and they're planning future atlases for the really wee ones, for ages 5-7 and 3-5.
It's never too soon for geography, is it?