Kid Karries is the ultimate help for getting one’s children into their beds at a reasonable hour, illustrating the many ways the author carried his children to their bedrooms. For each carry there is a somewhat fictional background as to the origin of the carry. Many of the carries are originals, invented by the author’s family.

Whilst the background stories are fictional, they are based on the family life of the author at the time of the carries, so a little bit of a memoir. The stories also incorporate some interesting and true facts for the children (and parents) to learn, for example that bats hang upside down as they are incapable of launching into flight from the ground. Each of the background stories has been illustrated by the author.

As all the carries were experienced by the author’s children, he was able to obtain their feedback on each, both from the enjoyment or fun aspect, as well as how scary each carry was. Despite a 25 year gap between experiencing the carries and seeking feedback, all of the carries could be remembered and reflected on. The children’s amusing and candid feedback is included in the book as written by them, no editing. The carries are also ranked individually and collectively from most to least favourite and most to least scary, as provided by the feedback. The author similarly provides his thoughts.

Kid Karries also includes hidden puzzles to be nutted out by the reader, with or without the help of the children. All of the family members are consistently colour coded. The first challenge is for the reader to determine who is who, and then which feedback is attributed to each of the children. The tougher challenge is to work out what the children’s arm positions mean. A clue: it is not semaphore.

To summarise, Kid Carries is a book of serious fun, illustrated ways to carry the children to bed, illustrated stories about the origin of each carry incorporating fact and fiction, real feedback on each of the carries from the author’s children, and finally, a couple of challenging puzzles to be worked on when the carries are done and the children are finally in bed, asleep.