What Author and Illustrator Oliver Jeffers’s Kids Can’t Live Without

We have the ones that you sort of flip up with the straw. My daughter has a pink one and my son has a turquoise one. I got myself one originally that’s this kind of mint-blue color and it’s exactly the same colors that I use in a lot of my paintings, especiallythe very first dipped painting, which people now associate as my color. I love the branding and how durable they are. And we’re always on the move, so it’s like each of us has our own water bottle, which is our responsibility. You know, moisturize from the inside out, as I once heard. They’re pretty good about keeping track of them and we’ve written their names massive on them and then there’s a sticker on the lid. When we can’t find them, they’re invariably in the car.

I’m a sucker for good design and interesting color choices and we’ve got the sort of olive-y green Floyd suitcase with the red wheels. The wheels are the best part because they’re just like longboard wheels. I’m not sure but I think they are actual skateboard wheels. They are especially good for rough city streets and walking through airports because they’re slightly soft and a joy to roll around. We love the cabin-approved bag because we try togo carry-onwhenever we can. We try to do that even for like a week or two even though we have the bigger one as well. And the zip compartments inside make it easy for the kids to kind of see what is there, you know, like,This is for your dirty clothes, this is for your clean clothes. It helps organize everything. They like to sit on top and then push each other along. Historically it was me wheeling them, dragging them, but they like to be able to deal with their own things now.

We’ve had various wagons from Radio Flyer, including this classic one, which we kind of use for everything. We use it to carry groceries from the car, slightly up the hill to our house. My studio in Belfast is at the bottom of the drive and on the rare occasion that I have got to work late through dinner, one of the kids will bring dinner down to me in the wagon covered in tea towel. I was speaking at the Glastonbury Music Festival last year and so we put a bunch of stuff in a big one and a little one of these and brought them to our campsite. They kind of come everywhere with us. They’re great for bringing some cooking supplies down to the local beach and lighting a little fire and cooking some sausages. Rather than calling it the Radio Flyer, because it’s red and it’s a wagon and it’s small, we’ve ended up calling it the “wed wagon,” we sort of mispronounce theR.

We are trying to get rid of all the nasty chemicals that seem to have been prevalent through the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s in our life and everyday products. So we’re trying to use better toothpaste, trying to use better soap, and this is one of our favorites. It always smells so nice and feels so good on the skin. Because it’s biodegradable, you can jump in a lake and sort of soap yourself off and wash in the water. We love it and even use it for dish soap and in our shower as well. And we normally keep a bottle in the car because you just never know.

I’m an ambassador for thesmartphone-free childhood movementthat’s based out of the U.K., which is following on from theAnxious Generationmovement. So, even though a bunch of my kids’ friends have phones, they know that they’re not getting a smartphone until they’re at least 16. But there’s something beautiful and simple about being able to contact your friends. So thisTin Can phoneis like the best of the ’80s and ’90s, where you can have conversations with a closed group of people and really sort of chat mindlessly on a landline phone, which is pretty incredible.

Each of the kids has their own so they could speak to each other, I guess, if they wanted. We use them in the States and then they’re bringing them to the U.K. this December, which we’re quite excited about so we can talk to our U.S. friends when we’re not in the country. Before this we had alandlineso our kids could call their grandparents. And there was one time when I was down in my studio and my wife was in the garden at the back, and our son was nowhere to be found. We realized that he’d called his grandfather and asked to go out somewhere and his grandfather came around and got him assuming that we knew. So there was a mild confusion and panic for a split second and then we laughed and were like,Okay, we now know to check before that ever happens again.

Neither of my children can sit still, and so if we’re at an airport or a train station or we just wanna go to a park somewhere, they can’t just go and sit down. There needs to always be an activity. So we always have a rubber ball for throwing around and playing Donkey or Time Bomb. It’s great for killing a bit of time and if we’re at a restaurant with a garden, my wife and I can sit and enjoy our dessert while they run to the grass and throw a ball to each other.

You never know when you might wanna go swimming so we always carry one of these because they’re light and compact and really absorbent. It can act as a blanket or to dry up a wet body. We’ve got a whole range of them, but this one has a cool pattern.

Again, kids will be kids. I’m all for digging holes, climbing trees, and rolling down hills, but there’s cuts and bruises and scrapes. So this is always at the bottom of a tote bag. The kids love the designs and sometimes if they bang a toe, even if there’s no blood, they like a little Band-Aid that makes them feel like it’s being attended to. It’s the placebo effect in action. And the little tin makes them easy to find; you can rattle it around and kinda hear it and your fingers can find it in the bottom of a bag easily enough.

I love this company. The bags are so well made and the design is great. But also, you can stuff everything into it. It’s a greatbeach bagor park bag. You can put a picnic and a whole change of clothes and everything else in it. I’ve actually traveled with it a few times and when it’s over my shoulder, I’ve somehow managed to get away with it as the extra bag as well as my cabin bag. But it can fit almost as much as a suitcase’s worth of stuff in it. We keep one in the car for grocery shopping or for trips where you always have to load stuff. There’s a pocket for everything, too, so you can find your car keys or your glasses or that bouncy ball or the first-aid kit. And if you sit it upright, it stays open.

The cardboard box is the greatest toy ever invented. My older brother gave me this tip once for both of their second birthdays. Take a cardboard box, fill it full of blown-up balloons, and wrap it in paper and it’ll be far better than any present you could buy. But even these days, if we’ve ordered something large-ish and it comes in a big cardboard box, they will keep it and they will make quite an elaborate fort out of a collection of cardboard boxes, and it will last for weeks. They’ll keep adding to it and adding to it. Luckily we’ve got a kitchen big enough that there’s an area we keep deliberately blank for activities. And some of these cardboard-box forts have had two or three extensions on them with a couple of floors. They will cut out windows and emergency flaps and a dog flap. The last one was a store. So they wrote the opening hours and the menu and the price and then put a delivery hatch and all sorts of things. It’s completely self-guided. We don’t have any hand in it.

My wife grew up traveling a lot with her family and her mom and dad used to always love playing card games like Jack Change It or Snap in the early days. So we always pack the cards with us for long waits at airports. Again, so much of this list is travel-centric or like, we’ve rented a cabin and there’s no TV and there’s no radio and we’re trying not to do iPads. So last night there was a storm coming in and we lit a candle and played Jack Change It, which is a card game Suzanne’s mother grew up playing. Though recently, my childhood best friend was over and he was teaching both of my children how to play Texas Hold’em.

I’m an illustrator and artist and everything, every idea, every concept starts with a pencil and a piece of paper. And gosh, about ten, 15 years ago, I discovered Blackwings and they’re by far my favorite pencil. So I order them by the box load and I use them, but then the kids have discovered how pleasant they are to draw with too. I would never encourage them to draw because I don’t want them to learn to hate what I love. I would never sort of try and suggest it. But if I’m drawing, they end up wanting to draw. And they will sit with a piece of paper and a pencil and draw for ages. Sometimes they’ll draw what they see, sometimes they’ll draw each other. A pencil and a piece of paper is the simplest magic, I think, known to mankind. It’s a great way to pass time and extract your imagination. And it’s a great way of looking, actually. It makes you look at things differently.

I knowpeople collect these thingsand they are everywhere, but also they’re really well made. And we’ve only got a handful. Each kid has their own special one that’s like their soulmate that they’ve had since birth. One is a rabbit and one is an elephant. We know that we’d have difficulty if they were to lose them. So on a friend’s advice I got replacement ones, backup ones, and both of them at some point have lost the originals. We had to start putting the replacements in the mix a little earlier so they were a little beat up and smelled like they should smell rather than being clean and fresh out of the store. My daughter was like, “This looks cleaner than Bun,” and we’re like, “Oh, yeah, remember he was lost for a while there? He went to the spa.” So that was the excuse. They tend to not travel around with them as much, but they live in their beds and when they’re feeling sad or afraid or they’re in a bad mood they go to their little stuffy soulmates and they both happen to be Jellycats.