If you’re raising a third culture kid, or just planning a big trip, you can expect that it will be an adjustment. New food, new sights, new everything awaits. It’s exciting — but it can also be a little intimidating for your children, especially the ones who didn’t get a vote in the decision.
One of the simplest ways to ease that change is to read travel stories with your child. Seeing a character who looks like them, having a similar experience, can make a big move feel less overwhelming — and a lot more possible. The books below are geared toward younger children, and each one offers a different way in, whether your child needs a character to identify with, a story about resilience, or just a gentle way to talk about what’s changing.
That adjustment is its own project — separate from the visa paperwork and the packing lists — and it deserves its own care. Books won’t do all the work, but they’re one of the easiest, lowest-lift tools you have for helping a child start processing identity, change, and belonging. A story gives a child language for something they may not yet know how to name.
Here are eight books written by Black authors and travelers that speak directly to what your child may be feeling, along with a few other things worth building into your family’s transition plan.
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Follows Ellie, an inquisitive young girl whose imagination carries her from Sri Lanka to Turks & Caicos to France to Kenya. Good for a child who hasn’t moved yet — it normalizes the idea of a big, wide world before the move becomes real, and gives you an easy opening to ask “where would you dream of going?”
Imani and her cousin Kwame travel to seven African countries together. Useful for building pride and familiarity with the continent specifically — helpful if your move is to or through Africa, or if you want your child to see the continent as a place of adventure rather than an abstraction.
Halima’s bedtime imagination takes her near and far each night — but she always returns to her favorite place. This one is quietly reassuring for a child who’s anxious about leaving “home” behind: it reinforces that home can travel with you, and that going somewhere new doesn’t mean losing what’s familiar.
Kim Imani is half-Black American, half-Korean, and newly relocated from the U.S. to South Korea. She’s learning to hold both of her cultures at once. This is especially valuable for biracial or multicultural kids, or any child who’s going to be navigating a dual identity in their new home.
Part of a series following sisters Jordyn and Kennedy through different cities. If your move is to Brazil — or you simply want a model for how a family can explore a new city together — this gives your child a script for what “settling in” and exploring can look like.
A bilingual story about a boy who turns his fear into strength. Less about travel specifically, more about resilience — useful for a child who’s scared, full stop, regardless of what’s causing it. Bilingual text is a nice bonus if your child is heading into a non-English-speaking environment.
JD searches for his lost stuffed bear against the backdrop of Hungary. A gentle way to talk about loss and disorientation in a new place — the small, concrete kind of “I don’t know where anything is here” feeling that often sits underneath bigger anxieties about a move.
Aya travels the world with her parents and her toy companion Pete, trying new foods and exploring new places with curiosity instead of fear. A good model for framing “different” as interesting rather than scary — useful reading in the weeks leading up to the move itself.
Books help your child process the move intellectually and emotionally, but they’re one piece of a larger transition plan. A few other things worth building in:
Keep a thread of continuity. A familiar food, a video call routine with grandparents, a favorite show — kids adjust better when something stays constant even as everything else changes.
Talk about identity directly, not just adventure. Books like Kim Imani open the door, but your child will likely have specific questions about how their Blackness is understood or perceived in your new country. Those conversations are worth having early and often, not just once.
Loop them into the logistics, age-appropriately. Kids don’t need the tax and visa details, but showing them a map, a photo of their new school, or letting them pick out something for their new room gives them a sense of agency in a decision that otherwise happened entirely without them.
Give the adjustment period time. However well you prepare, expect a real adjustment window once you land — usually longer than most families expect, and non-linear.
Find people who are already living it. Books can open the conversation, but at some point your child (and you) will need more than a story — you’ll need other families who understand exactly what this specific version of “different” feels like, because they’re navigating it too.
Reading lists and routines will get you through the early weeks. But the deeper questions — how your child holds a Black identity that gets defined differently in every country, what to say when a stranger asks “where are you really from,” how to build community when a search for “Black expat parents” turns up almost nothing — those don’t resolve with a book list. They take longer, and they’re easier to sit with when you’re not the only one asking them.
That’s what The Village Abroad is for — a monthly publication built around exactly this: parents raising Black children outside their home country, whether that’s a child who’s Black like you, mixed-race, or adopted into a family and a country that aren’t originally their own. It’s the identity conversation, the honest family stories, and the practical intel all in one place, written by people who are actually living it.
Because it takes a village. Ours just happens to be abroad.