We’ve been thinking a lot about maps and the stories they tell, not only about the places they locate, but also about the people who make them. Denis Woods writes that maps are as important for what they don’t include as for what they do include.
Our sense of the world is informed by narratives of the places we inhabit, so it’s not surprising that kids are fascinated by maps – whether by creating cities of wooden blocks or lego, towns made of Fisher-Price animal barns, Barbie’s Dream House and shoeboxes, or the Hogwarts maps from Harry Potter.

Maps are pictorial stories, they’re personal, they’re specific without being literal. They’re great for stimulating imagination and visual literacy. They create opportunities to make social connections and explore multiple perspectives through juxtaposing different maps of a single place, or similar maps of different places.

The Mobile Mapping Museum introduces kids to mapping their own spaces, reading other people’s maps, seeing how their maps connect with others, the idea of converting real spaces to representational maps and the storytelling that is a part of this process.