Kids' book review : Busy Busy Things That Go (2000 Stickers)

As Parragon Book Buddies, the Madhouse kids always get very excited when the postie drops off the latest book for review. We've received some cracking reads lately, the most recent being the fun but educational "factivity" book Travel Back Through Time To The Land of Dinosaurs and the dino-tastic comic book T-Rex Terror. For this month's book, we moved away from prehistoric times to the busy busy modern world, which is - as it says on the cover -"big, fast, loud and tough" !

The book really reminds me of a book that I loved when I was growing up - it was a Richard Scarry book and I think it was called something like The Busiest Book Ever. This book, Busy Busy Things That Go, looks at all the different sorts of vehicles and machinery that young readers may have seen in the modern world. There are lots of things to look at on each double page which are very colourful and visually appealing with very short texts.

But the book has one huge bonus feature - a whopping 2000 stickers ! Obviously, given the huge number of stickers, some of them are very small, but nevertheless, Pierre's eyes nearly came out on stalks when he saw how many there were ! This is great because it means several children can play and read together and still have plenty of stickers to go around, as well as many left over for decorating bedrooms, books, doors, walls ... even the dog had one stuck on its nose at one point !

The instructions on each page tell you where to stick the larger stickers (and you can add extra details to the illustrations with the smaller stickers). As the official blurb says, "Put the scoops on the diggers. Fit the tractors to the trailers. Get the machines to the construction site and the trucks on the road. Make your own big, busy scenes with all the stickers!". But it's not just a sticker book, as it also has other activities like spot the difference, colouring and mazes. Pierre spent ages going through and doing the activities and sticking on the required stickers, then going back to the beginning and going through again to add more ! Boys in particular seem attracted to things on wheels, but the book features lots of girls in the pictures too so I'm sure it would appeal to little readers (and sticker-stickers !) of both sexes.

star rating : 4.5/5

• Paperback
• Publisher: Parragon Book Service Ltd (26 Dec. 2014)
• ISBN-10: 1472366999
• ISBN-13: 978-1472366993

RRP : £8 (but only £3.82 on amazon at the moment, which is a bargain !)

Disclosure : As Parragon Book Buddies, we received the book in order to write an honest review.