For Oliver Jeffers, a train ride is more than a way to get from one place to another—it’s a moving canvas for curiosity, observation, and imagination. The bestselling author and illustrator, whose books include The Day the Crayons Quit and Here We Are, has spendt the summer traveling with his two children (son Harland, 10, and daughter, Mari, 7) and making the most of the fact that their home in Northern Ireland is just a five-minute walk from a train station.

That spirit of turning travel into creative play is at the heart of Jeffers’ new partnership with Trainline and Yoto, which invites families to make the journey itself part of the adventure. Dubbed the Yoto Draw Along with Trainline, Jeffers has created audio-guided drawing adventures designed to give kids something to listen to, imagine, and create as they travel. The collaboration is an extension of an idea Jeffers has long embraced as both an artist and a father: sometimes the best creative prompt is simply looking out the window and seeing where your imagination takes you.

Here, Jeffers shares his tips for traveling creatively with kids—from packing a tiny “imagination kit” and turning passing landscapes into drawing prompts to embracing boredom, making room for observation, and why some of his best ideas have come to him on a moving train.

Tell us about your travels this summer.
“My family is currently based in Northern Ireland, in a town with a train station a 5-minute walk from our door, so we have the wonderful advantage of exploring so many great places on the island. I’ve taken the train from London to Paris many times, and the Eurostar is one of my favorite journeys. I love that part of the trip takes you underwater—it’s magical and immediately gets your imagination going. It’s a perfect example of how train travel can make the journey feel like part of the adventure, rather than simply a way to get from one place to another.”

How do you think about train travel in relationship to children?
“Taking the train is my favorite way to travel. There’s something about its rhythm and the way the landscape continually unfolds outside the window, appearing and disappearing within seconds. The unique towns, fields, stations, and people I observe naturally put my mind into a creative state. It’s no exaggeration to say that a large percentage of my good ideas have come to me on moving trains, especially on longer train rides, when I can get my sketchbook out and get some good thinking done.”

“For children, the window can become a frame for hundreds of little stories: Who lives in that house? Where does that road lead? What might be hiding beyond the hill? The magic is that the journey keeps offering you new things to notice, question, and imagine along the way. My family loves getting on the train early so we can get 4 seats with a table and then lay out a bigger drawing project.”

Have your kids tried out the Yoto Draw Along with Trainline?
“Absolutely! What appealed to me immediately was that the Draw Along gives children a beginning, rather than a finished answer. There are 12 audio-guided adventures and more than two hours of storytelling and drawing prompts, taking children everywhere from mountain and dream trains to bustling cities and underwater worlds. A child might begin by following the prompt, but then the train grows wings, the conductor becomes a monster and the whole thing goes wonderfully off course. That is usually where the most interesting ideas begin.”

Beyond the Draw Alongs, do you have any tips for making travel (including train travel) a more creative and fun experience for kids?
“I would begin by treating the journey as your ‘drawing prompt.’ Ask everyone to find one thing that no one else has noticed, such as a strange rooftop, a cloud shaped like an animal or someone wearing a magnificent hat. Then draw it, rename it or make it the beginning of a story. It immediately changes the question from ‘Are we there yet?’ to ‘What else can we find?'”

“Parents already seem to recognize the value of that approach. Trainline’s research found that 94% believe creative activities can make the in-between parts of travel—waiting, sitting still, or dealing with delays—more enjoyable for children. Another 84% believe those activities help children remember a journey more vividly. I think that is because the child is no longer simply being transported through the experience. Instead, they are helping create it. Longer train rides offer enough time to invent a monster, draw an entire town, or begin a family story that carries on long after the train stops.”

One of the tips you gave to Trainline travelers is to pack a “pocket-sized imagination kit.” What do these kits look like for you and your kids?
“My pocket-sized imagination kit is simple! I pack paper, pencils, crayons, a few markers or pencils, a sharpener and an eraser, all kept together in one small pouch. Importantly, it houses the essentials. If you’ve ever traveled with kids, you’ll understand that simplicity matters. If the kit creates more logistics than it solves, it has rather missed the point.”

What are some of the drawing games you play with your kids—on trains and elsewhere?
“Outside of the Yoto Draw Along with Trainline, one of my favorites begins with a simple shape. One child draws a shape and I have to turn it into a monster, or I draw one and ask them to transform it into a hero. It removes the pressure of staring at a completely blank page because someone else has already given you the first clue. We also like to pass a piece of paper around, with each person adding something to the same scene. One person might draw the train, while another might add the clouds and someone else might invent a character. By the end, the drawing has the fingerprints of the whole family on it and usually bears very little resemblance to where it began. A train-specific drawing activity that I love is letting the direction of travel shape the game. If you are facing backward, draw the past and where you have come from. If you are facing forward, draw the future and where you imagine you might be going.”

Do your kids have boundaries around screen time in your home (and during travel), especially for reasons related to nurturing creativity?
“Very much so. They know they won’t have phones until they are 16, and they have iPads for occasional use. We have some select apps we let them use that help with both education and creativity. And we try to avoid mindless games with lots of ads. I use Procreate on an iPad a little for work, and occasionally we will use that to play a game where I take a photo of one of them with their arm hanging out, and they then draw their imaginary friend whose shoulder their arm is draped around.”

As an author who has been around children for 20+ years, have you noticed their attention span or creativity shift at all, due to screens and other factors?
“Sadly, I think I have seen the collective attention span of society at large shift a lot. I can’t say my kids in particular have lost their attention spans. They can still get pretty curious and absorbed in something for a long time. I do think the pace of modern life and the constant pull of the next thing can make it harder for all of us to give something our full attention. But children are still curious and creative. Oftentimes, they simply need the space to slow down, look closely, and let their imaginations wander. When my kids say they are bored, I always start a timer and say, ‘No one can be bored for more than 17 minutes because after that your brain starts to invent games to entertain itself.’ It’s remarkable how true this is.”

Your kids are in their prime elementary school years. What’s exciting you most about fatherhood right now?
“What excites me most is just watching them enjoy a life filled with curiosity and play, and unencumbered by the myriad problems that accompany responsibility into adulthood. I love the questions they ask and seeing how their brains work.”

What’s making you most nervous?
“What makes me most nervous is the uncertainty about what any kind of future might look like—how climate change will affect the small patterns of their lives, like where and how they can travel, how everyday food may be affected, and also what kind of jobs will await young adults in 10 or 15 years as we plunge headfirst into an artificially intelligent future.”

Any new projects coming up that you’re looking forward to?
“I just released A Day Off School here in the States, and I’m really excited about it. The book is about how the excitement a young boy has on an unexpected sick day home from school turns into FOMO that the day he is missing may, in his imagination, be the greatest day ever in the history of the school.”

“I’m also releasing a book, Meet the Hueys, this coming March. It’s in graphic novel format, which I’m especially excited about. And I’m in the home straight of making the art for a book about a neurodivergent girl and her singular ability to engineer her own joyous freedom. It’s called Escape and is written by Annie Barrows. I’m also preparing for my first-ever solo museum show of paintings in Northern Ireland as I bring my Dipped Painting series to a close early next year.”

Be sure to follow Oliver Jeffers at oliverjeffers.com and @oliverjeffers on Instagram.

Enjoy Oliver’s partnership with Trainline and Yoto through the Yoto Draw Along with Trainline, a collection of 12 audio-guided drawing adventures designed for travel. The Draw Alongs are available through the free Yoto app or can be downloaded to a Yoto Make Your Own Card for offline listening.

Photos courtesy of Oliver Jeffers and Trainline.