Ah yes, good old March Break -- when every single school in Ontario is closed at the exact same time. I'm sure there is a reason for it somewhere but the unfortunate result for the rest of us is that hotels are more expensive, airports more crowded, roads blocked with traffic... well you get the idea. So, if you're going away, expect to have to sit and wait whether it's in your car or at the airport. One time we had to wait in the Miami airport for five hours with our sons who were 2 and 3 years old at the time. Those were the longest five hours of our fellow passengers' lives!

In an effort to help keep kids entertained and interested in activities other than observing and commenting on their fellow passengers or bugging their sibling, we've put together a list of games, toys and activity books that are great for travel. Here's a word of advice though: a friend of mine was driving up to Collingwood one time with her 5 year old daughter who had just discovered "big kid" Lego. Thinking it was a great way to keep her occupied she gave her a little Lego set to put together in the car. Twenty minutes up Highway 400, her daughter started screaming because a few of the pieces had fallen between the carseat and the seat. It was a very unpleasant journey from there on in. Tip: toys with small pieces are NOT good car toys!

Here are some great travel toys (although those with small pieces are ideal for your destination, not necessarily the journey!):

Books: We have a great selection of books, from picture books through to young adolescent books. There are novels, reference books and novel series, activity books and soft-covered books.

Canadian books to keep in mind for younger children:
The Hockey Sweater: A classic hockey story. The drawings are beautiful, the story is engaging. A popular choice.
ABC of Canada: A soft cover book, great for toddlers.
My Kids' favourite book: 2010 Guiness Book of World Records: A very absorbing book, even for kids who don't like to read like my middle one. They can skim it and flip to areas they want to know more about. Unfortunately you're probably going to have to listen to a lot of "Guess how many tennis balls this golden retriever can stuff in his mouth!"

Books For Parents:
Toronto Fun Places: Staying in town and stumped for things to do? This guide will give you lots of great suggestions.
500 Places to Take Your Kids Before They Grow Up: This is a book for parents -- but it makes for great reading for planning future family trips with over 40 destinations and suggested age ranges, hotels and other necessary information.

Activity and Sticker Books:
We have a variety of sticker books for both boys and girls, as well as Klutz books which are craft kits with really detailed instructions (and also 20% off this month!), art books (most come with markers or pencils), mini mystery books, card game books...you get the idea.

ColourWonder Stow and Go Studio by Crayola is another great product for car or plane travel. It's packed in a sturdy case, which can be used as a table top, and the markers are Colour Wonder markers -- which means they will only colour on the special Crayola paper (and not the seat in front of them, or their arms, or their sister).

Imaginetics: Magnetic scene boards with magnetic pieces to create imaginative scenes over and over. One of the most popular is the airport magnetic landscape, but there is a wide variety from fairy princess scenes to Mr. Potato Head to dinosaurs.

Games:
There are some great travel games as well, some can be played solo and are geared to keep the older set entertained as well.

Excalibur makes some great electronic games, such as wordsearch, chess and Space Invaders. There are also small and magnetic versions of popular board games: Backgammon and Chess by "Go Games" come in sturdy mini metal cases.

Eeboo makes sturdy cardboard games such as a memory game called "I never forget a face" and dominoes with colourful pictures.

Amaze is a maze you can do over and over again with different results every time. While you trace through the maze the bars change directions blocking your way and making you go in different directions sometimes creating endless loops and sometimes making you retrace your steps.

Melissa and Doug Travel Bingo: This is the ideal bingo game for the car as there are no moving pieces and they're big and sturdy enough for little fingers. The game cards feature town/city, signs, vehicles and country.

Scrabble Apple and Bananagrams have more than just their fruit theme in common. Both are great for taking with you on holiday because they're a compact version of classic Scrabble. The pouch holds the wooden tiles which can be laid out and formed into words on a table. Great for chalet or hotel room. Definitely not recommended for car or plane ride!

Wherever you go this March Break, we hope that you have a great time!

If you're staying in the Toronto Area, be sure to stay tuned, we have a lot of great things going on at our stores over the break!

--Cathy the Toy Mom

Given that the movie, "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" comes out today, we thought it might be appropriate to do a quick summary of Percy Jackson, the hero of five books by Rick Riordan, and his first quest for the lightning bolt.

Percy Jackson has a lot of personal baggage: he goes to boarding school 50 miles north of New York City, has been diagnosed with both dyslexia and ADHD and has just been asked not to return to yet another school for the next year -- and he's only 12. But then some strange things start happening around him, and although he can see them nobody else can, so to top it all off, the poor kid thinks he might be going a little crazy.

Fortunately, this self-doubt doesn't last for too long, and he discovers, finally, that he does in fact have a dad (his mother claimed his father was "lost at sea" before Percy was born) -- and his dad is none other than Poseidon, god of the sea. Only the problem is that "The Big Three" gods (Zeus, Poseidon and Hades) had made a pact after World War II not to sire any more children. Clearly Poseidon broke the pact and now there's going to be trouble. Not-so-mythical monsters can smell demi-gods, or "half-bloods" as Percy is now classified -- and like very much to destroy them. For his own safety Percy is taken into the protective custody of a camp for the children of gods. But it isn't long before the heads of the camp realize that Percy must go out into the now increasingly dangerous real world to search for Zeus' lightning bolt to prove not only that Poseidon didn't take it but also that Hades most likely did. And so the story begins.

This book is a real page turner from beginning to end, full of battles with the plot moving at a fast enough pace to keep kids interested. Kids will like Percy, the flawed boy who rises to the challenges and grows up during his journey. Fortunately he begins his travels with two sidekicks Grover and Annabeth who help him in his quest to retrieve the lightening bolt and protect him.

The Lightning Thief is the first in the series of the "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" stories, there are four others. For the month of February, 2010, all Percy Jackson books are 20% off.

--Cathy the Toy Mom

Attention Readers! We are once again holding our Winter Book Sale at Mastermind!

Our Mastermind Toys stores are up here in Toronto, Canada, home of the world's coolest tall building (you may have a tall tower, Dubai, but ours looks like a ROCKET SHIP) and also the NHL's saddest hockey team (siiiiiiiigh), and the winter months tend to drag on. People here know that this is the best time to grab a book, fake sick so you can stay home from school or work (I'm pretty sure our bosses won't read this... right?), and curl up by a fire. So what better time for a giant book sale??

The reason we have this sale, where you can buy a huge selection of books in any of our bricks and mortar stores at 40% off, is that we are constantly adding new and exciting titles to our lineup, so we often have to move out some of our older stock. These are all still great books for kids... junior novels, story books, and more... and it's a great opportunity to grow the library. The sale runs for only a couple of weeks, and it's only available in the stores.

So if you're in our area, drop into the stores to grab some great kids books, talk about the rocket-like quality of the CN Tower, and bemoan the Maple Leafs and their resolute stance on not winning (siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh).

-- Toy Buyin' Ryan
Also... is it just me, or does the image of the glasses on top of the pile of books make that look like a book monster with an angry mouth? "I eat grammar for BREAKFAST rrrrrr"