Book Review: Dare you to Doodle! Activity Book

AD/Gifted. I love a good activity book. I always have at least one in my bag for my son to pull out and entertain him himself with whenever we need to fend off the boredom. Over Easter we were out and about a lot, having lunch with friends, travelling and generally having periods of time to fill. The activity book I’d shoved in my bag for duration was a new one, Dare you to Doodle it’s a special kind of activity book, and one which really sparks the imagination.

Dare you to Doodle is a super creative doodle activity book. You can make your own comic strip story; find buried treasure, design some cool robots, create a flip book, design your favourite pizza or complete a moon mission. Dare you to Doodle encourages you to think outside of the box and be creative.

Created by Caroline Rowlands, this activity book is aimed at children aged 8+; but it’s definitely the kind of book I could enjoy for a quiet half hour with a cup of coffee.

Win a copy of the activity book - Dare you to Doodle!

Inside the pages are black, white and green, with plenty of space for creativity. It was brilliant for my boy over Easter. We went out for lunch a few times and he just doodled away, sometimes we would doodle away together. It was lovely to do something creative with him. He really enjoyed just doodling instead of working on activity sheets or something overtly educational which is as it should be when you’re on holiday.

Dare you to Doodle has 144 pages of doodles to do and is just the thing for sparking creativity or to doodle do if you need to wind down after a hard day. Dare you to Doodle is published on 2nd May 2019 by Carlton Kids. It costs £8.99 and is available from a wide range of retailers.

Disclosure: We were sent a copy of Dare you to Doodle for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

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.