As always, we recommend pre-reading this book before reading it to your children or group.

In this story, Milo and his sister travel by subway train to visit someone special. Along the way, Milo imagines where other people on the train are headed.

Towards the end of the book, it is revealed that Milo’s mother is incarcerated and that Milo and his sister are on their way to visiting her.

In our workshop, we chose to end the story before Milo’s destination was revealed. We were meeting over Zoom, which made conversations difficult, and we felt that we would not be able to give a conversation about incarceration the attention and time it deserved.

We emailed parents and caregivers to let them know why we did not choose to read the whole story and encouraged them to finish the book on their own. We also encourage parents and caregivers to watch the entire fascinating video from illustrator Christian Robinson.

Be sure to check out the Penguin Random House Teacher’s Guide (a free downloadable pdf) with ideas for talking about this topic with children plus tons of other great material.