Book Review: The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer’s Guide

AD/Gifted. The school holidays can be hard to fill with fun stuff. I like to secretly get a small collection of fun stuff to pull out when the mood dips and he complains he’s bored. One of the things in my secret bag of wonders was a copy of The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer’s Guide which he received with a squeal of absolute joy.

The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer’s Guide by Ned Hartley is published on 2nd May 2019. It costs £7.99 and is a 64 page softback book packed with everything you need to know about Pokemon including reviews, facts, stats and tips.

Win a copy of The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer's Guide

The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer’s Guide is divided into three sections. In the first section, all the classic games are reviewed, from Pokemon Go, to Pokemon Ultra Sun and Moon and Pokemon: Let’s go Pikachu!

In the second section you can find more facts, figures and fun. With information about the TV shows, movies and the trading card game. Section three is where you can find the complete Pokemon encyclopedia, with entries on all 800+ Pokemon, including strengths, weaknesses and combat skills; in fact everything a Pokemon trainer needs to know!

This is a really comprehensive book about Pokemon. It’s absolutely the kind of book kids like my son adore. Every page is packed with facts and stats and it’s perfect for dipping in and out of.

Win a copy of The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer's Guide

The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer’s Guide is aimed at children aged 7+ and my 8 year old is thoroughly enjoying it. He’s had it for a few days now and he has got a lot out of it. I’m a big fan of letting kids read whatever they are interested in, because pretty much all reading is good.

The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer’s Guide is colourful, really well illustrated, packed full of Pokemon info and pitched at just the right level. Pokemon is showing no signs of falling out of fashion, and keenly priced at £7.99, The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer’s Guide is the ideal book to entertain an aspiring Pokemon trainer!

The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer’s Guide is published in May 2019 and is available for pre-order online now.

If you enjoyed this, you might like to download my FREE Pokemon reading log.

Disclosure: We were sent a copy of The Ultimate Pokemon Trainer’s Guide for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own. 

Review: STEM Activity Books

This month sees the publication of a new range of STEM Activity Books from Carlton Kids. STEM stands for; Science; Technology; Engineering and Maths. These are all the subjects (apart from Maths) which my son loves best and they’re all good subjects to encourage our children to be interested in.

My son will be 8 in just a few short weeks and if I’m honest, we’ve been struggling to find activity books to do at home. We always like to have a few in the activity bag which we take out with us whenever we go for a meal or a day out somewhere. Good activity books aimed at children his age seem to be fairly hard to come by.

Giveaway & Review: STEM Activity Books

The STEM Activity Books range includes;
  • Sensational Science by Steph Clarkson
  • Terrific Technology by Claire Sipi
  • Extreme Engineering by Paul Virr
  • Amazing Maths by Hannah Wilson

The STEM Activity Books from Carlton Kids look like they’re going to fill that activity book gap for my son. In face when I showed them to him he was thrilled and immediately went off and started working his way through the Extreme Engineering book.

Each of the STEM Activity Books are filled with mazes, puzzles, quizzes and facts and there are over 40 activities in each of the books. The Sensational Science book, covers a really broad spectrum of science including; Our Universe; Chemical Reactions; Gravity; Awesome Atoms; Brilliant Bodies; Rocks and Fossils and Electricity. For a boy who loves science as much as he does, this is the best book in the world right now.

In the Amazing Maths book, find the coordinates on the map, colour in the polygons to reveal the animals, work out the area of the farm, and spot the symmetrical objects. These are just some of the activities featured in the Amazing Maths book.

Giveaway & Review: STEM Activity Books

The other books, Terrific Technology, Extreme Engineering and Amazing Maths are all similarly packed with facts and fun things to do. They’re colourfully illustrated and aimed at ages 6+. My son is nearly 8 and I would say they were absolutely bang on for him.

Each of the four STEM Activity Books is engaging and interesting. They’re the kind of things you can do on car journeys, or days out. Or perhaps keep them to one side and do the activities alongside any STEM activities they might be studying at school. My son goes to a science after school class, so these books are great to accompany and reinforce his learning at home too.

Each book in the STEM Activity series costs £9.99 and they are available to order now online or in good bookshops.

We were sent these STEM Activity books for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Review: I Am Not A… Craft Activity Books

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but each Wednesday I try to publish some kind of book review or round-up and each Thursday I do some kind of craft. Imagine my delight when I opened up a package containing all four of the I Am Not A… craft activity books. Crafts and books… two of my favourite things!

The series of I Am Not A… craft activity books is written by Sara Stanford and contains the following titles –

  • I Am Not A Cereal Box
  • I Am Not A Toilet Roll
  • I Am Not An Old Sock
  • I Am Not An Eggbox

Review: I Am Not A... Craft Activity Books

They are ideal books for those of us who look in our recycling bins and wish we could turn some of our trash into treasure. This series encourages you to recycle your cereal boxes, old socks, toilet rolls or eggboxes.

Each book shows you how to create ten craft projects in an easy to follow, step-by-step way. The books are just the thing for children to follow by themselves, or with a little extra help from a grown-up. I’m sure teachers and playgroups will also find a lot of craft inspiration in these books.

I Am Not A Cereal Box shows you how to make a robot, an aquarium, a car, a dinosaur, a castle, an elephant, a rock star guitar, a building, a marble run and a puppet theatre. In I Am Not A Toilet Roll you can make a shark, a bat, an elephant, a rocket, a pirate, a unicorn, a ninja, a gingerbread man, a castle and a mermaid. The other books in the series have a similarly dazzling selection of craft ideas to make. 

The books are well illustrated and simply written, so children will find the instructions easy to follow. Each page also includes some fun facts and other ideas for similar crafts to make. At the start of each book is a handy list of the craft materials you might need throughout the book.

Review: I Am Not A... Craft Activity Books

If you have crafty children, or you want to encourage them to craft a little more, these easy to follow books are a great place to start. I know my son always loves junk modelling and creating things out of things that might otherwise have been thrown in the bin. I know my son is already drawing up a things to make list and I’m collecting all the toilet rolls I can get my hands on. Always a good sign!

Each book in the series costs £6.99 and they are available to order now online or in good bookshops.

We were sent these books for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Review: The Totally Wild, Fact-Packed, Fold-Out Animal Atlas

When I was growing up, I think we got most of our information about the world from ladybird books and an old atlas which was kicking about the place. My son can spend hours pouring over atlases and he has a few which he dips in and out of. We’ve recently acquired a copy of The Totally Wild, Fact-Packed, Fold-Out Animal Atlas which ticks all the right boxes for my animal obsessed, map loving son.

Review: The Totally Wild, Fact-Packed, Fold-Out Animal Atlas

The Totally Wild, Fact-Packed, Fold-Out Animal Atlas by Jen Green and illustrated by Christine Engel is a bright, colourful animal atlas which is designed specifically to make the vast reaches of our planet tangible for a young audience. It features beautiful, detailed maps that children will love to pore over, discovering something new each time. A fabulous “pop-up” map shows the world’s animal biomes at a glance and the accessible text is packed full of amazing facts on record-breaking animals, creatures to beware of, and animals that work alongside people.

The atlas is divided by continent, and there are gatefolded pages filled with colourful artworks, photographs and illustrations that show biomes and terrains as well as wildlife. Other maps show people, places and political boundaries. This Fold-Out Animal Atlas is designed to help you discover people, creatures and amazing physical and man-made features, and find out how every part of our planet is both vital and connected.

Review: The Totally Wild, Fact-Packed, Fold-Out Animal Atlas

Each page is packed with bite-size facts which are easily digestible, with lots of talking points and there’s even a quiz. It’s a great book for younger children to look at with a parent, and for older children to enjoy by themselves. It is just right for my seven year old son, he’s spent several evenings before bed reading the atlas and looking at the beautifully illustrated maps.

It’s really wonderful when you find books which your children love and enjoy reading, which help them learn too. This is one of those books, it’s part of a wider series of fold out atlases, so if they enjoy this book, you can get others like it too. It’s an animal atlas thumbs up from us!

The Totally Wild, Fact-Packed, Fold-Out Animal Atlas by Jen Green is published in paperback in August 2018. The atlas costs £9.99 and is widely available in good bookshops and online.

Books: Jurassic World Special Edition: From DNA to Indominus Rex!

Dinosaurs are showing no signs of falling out of fashion for my six year old son. On the contrary, he seems more obsessed than ever at the moment and why would I discourage that? He’s starting to read independently now and whilst he still needs some help with tricky words he’s never seen before, he does like to take himself off to bed each night with a dinosaur book. We were sent the new Jurassic World Special Edition: From DNA to Indominus Rex to see what our junior paleontologist thought about it.

Books: Jurassic World Special Edition: From DNA to Indominus Rex!

Jurassic World Special Edition: From DNA to Indominus Rex is a 32 page hardback book. It’s a large sized book packed with dinosaur facts and includes genetically engineered, terror-inspiring dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park trilogy and Jurassic World, including new profiles for Tyrannosaurus rex, Indominus rex and Velociraptor, as well as other favourites from the original films.

Books: Jurassic World Special Edition: From DNA to Indominus Rex!

Download the free Jurassic World Special Edition: From DNA to Indominus Rex app (available from the App Store and Google Play). Then using the advanced Augmented Reality app, you can bring the book to life. Just scan the code on the pages of the book and you can walk a lifesize Jurassic Park dinosaur across your floor, photograph your friends with favourite dinosaurs or connect with another device in dual user mode to roam and explore. 

There’s lots of reading in small chunks which are the right length for our six year old. The book features the fictional island where Jurassic Park is set, with information about some of the main characters in the films. It’s an engaging combination of fact and fiction and ideal if you’re a fan of the films too. 

The book and app combination is an obvious winner. Bringing the dinosaurs to life and having them walk across your table is really good fun. Swatting off a plague of flying Pteranodon is also pretty funny; it helps if you’ve got a silly mum who will pretend to run away from them too.

Books: Jurassic World Special Edition: From DNA to Indominus Rex!

Jurassic World Special Edition: From DNA to Indominus Rex! costs £9.99 and the app is free to download. Together they are a lot of fun to play with and it is both interesting and educational. The book would make an excellent present for any junior dinosaur enthusiasts in your life.

Jurassic World Special Edition: From DNA to Indominus Rex! is available in bookshops and on Amazon from 10th August 2017.

 
Note: We were sent the Jurassic World Special Edition book to review. All images and opinions are our own. This post contains an affiliate link.

Book Review: Transformers Robots in Disguise

It’s hard to believe, but I really am old enough to remember Transformers when they first came out in the 1980’s. My brother was a huge fan and probably managed to collect all of the figures (my nephew is lucky that my brother has saved them to pass onto the next generation). My five year old and his slightly older cousin are both Transformers mad and they’ve both got small collections of the new versions of the Transformers figures. To complement this, we got our hands on a copy of the new Transformers Robots in Disguise book from Carlton Books.

Transformers Robots in Disguise

The Transformers Robots in Disguise book is like no book I’ve ever encountered before. This hardback book helps Transformer fans to find out who’s who in the all-action world of Crown City and, and this is the very exciting bit, you can download an app which when used with the book brings the exciting world of these robots in disguise to life!

Transformers Robots in Disguise

You can bring your favourite Autobots and Decepticons to life with 3D augmented reality animations and interact with the robots on both smartphones and tablets. Although we found that the iPad was a bit big for the small boy to use effectively, but the iPhone was just right for his little hands.

You can interact with and customize your favourite Transformers including Bumblebee, Grimlock, Steeljaw and Optimus Prime. Plus there’s the facility to connect your device to a friend’s, and go head-to-head in a battle to see who is the ultimate winner, though we didn’t do this.

Transformers Robots in Disguise

The small boy loved the book and finding out more about the Transformers, though the real hit was being able to bring the Transformers to life in our living room.

The app was free to download and alongside the book they have provided hours and hours of entertainment for the boy. I would say that this book and the app are a fantastic gift for Transformers fans. I think my five year old is probably at the lower end of the age range, as we’ve had to read the book and use the app together – but that just makes it more fun for us both I think.

The Transformers Robots in Disguise Book is just £9.99 and is published on 6th October 2016. For more information, or to order a copy visit the Carlton Books website.

Note: We were sent the Transformers: Robots in Disguise Book for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

Book Review: Pirate Ship Sticker Book, Carlton Books

Being the mum of a five year old boy, I know there are several things in life which make him incredibly happy. Superheroes, Star Wars and Pirates are top of his list. Throw in some stickers and you know you’re onto a very good thing. When the new Pirate Ship Sticker Book from Carlton Books landed on our doormat, I suspected I’d have a very happy boy on my hands.

The Pirate Ship Sticker Book is more than just a basic sticker book. It has 23 pages of pirate facts, information and scenes to sticker, as well as over 150 reusable stickers and 16 pages of pirate activities including colouring in. Plus a treasure map, spot the misfits and a design your own galleon activity. Within the pages of this book you can explore the Scurvy Dog pirate ship, which is home to Captain Skull and his rascally crew of salty sea-dogs!

Pirate Ship Sticker Book

There’s quite a lot of reading in this Pirate Ship Sticker Book, considering it’s a sticker book. We enjoyed reading it together at bedtime, sticking the stickers in the right places and talking about pirate life and what it must have been like to live on a pirate ship.

Pirate Ship Sticker Book

The book is really colourfully illustrated by Maria Taylor, with lots of attention to detail. You really get the sense that pirate ships were fairly unpleasant and smelly places to be. We especially liked that you could really enhance the pirate scene with stickers and the small boy loved to see which sticker went where.

Pirate Ship Sticker Book

Written by Claire Sipi and Jim Pipe, the Pirate Ship Sticker Book is packed full of information about pirate life. Mostly these are in short paragraphs alongside accompanying illustrations. These made for really useful talking points, we’d read the text and then discuss what we’d read and what was going on in the picture.

Pirate Ship Sticker Book

We buy these kind of books a lot for the small boy, he enjoys sticker books and they’re good to take out when we go out for a meal or something. I think it’s a very well designed book, there’s lots to read, do and discuss. The boy has really enjoyed reading it with me and doing the activities.

I feel like it’s given the boy a more in-depth understanding of pirates than previously. He still arrrrrrs and tries to get me to walk the plank, but now he’s talking more about day to day pirate life on the Scurvy Dog, which to me is the beginnings of an interest and understanding of history.

There was nothing we didn’t like about the book. The small boy is nearly six and I would say that 5 is about the minimum age for this book; the reading is a little hard for him so we are reading it together.

Other sticker books in the series include Doll’s House, Castle and Princess Palace. I’d like to see more, the Pirate Ship Sticker Book was fab.

The Pirate Ship Sticker Book is just £5.99 and is published on 6th October 2016.

Note: We were sent the Pirate Ship Sticker Book for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.