My kids are much older now, but we always supported them watching Dinosaur Train, in which the clearly independently wealthy Pteranodon family with their adopted son (a t-rex) go on a mysteriously large number of vacations via a maybe-magical train to visit other dinosaurs in various climates and time periods.

We also liked PBS’s Word Girl, which mixes superpowers and grammar with kind of a Rocky and Bullwinkle style humor.

We loathed Octonauts and especially Littlest Pet Shop, both of which, sadly, my kids really enjoyed.

It helps to think of it very much as Canterbury Tales: a frame story in which a group of pilgrims traveling together have spare time and share their life stories. In this case there’s enough overarching story to make you want to know what happens when they arrive at their destination, but that’s not this novel. It is very much the following ones.