Timeline Activity Book

Timeline Activity Book

By Peter Goes

Published by Gecko Press

Companion to the international bestseller Timeline, with drawings, puzzles and creative projects alongside snippets of history from around the world. This is the perfect way of making sure those facts have made an impact! 

Find hours of entertainment and spark your creativity with this fascinating journey through the history of our world. Continue to learn about culture, history and design by making your own mark. 

Timeline will spark your creativity. Drawings, puzzles and activities sit alongside facts and images from Peter Goes's remarkable visual history of the world. In this activity book you will draw the meteorite that made the dinosaurs go extinct, spot the differences in busy Byzantium, make a monogram of your own name, draw the Tower of Babel as high as you can, escape from a medieval maze making sure the rats don't catch you, use code to read a secret message by a Cold War spy, decorate the Berlin Wall with your own graffiti, and much more!Printed on thick paper and with detachable pages, the book can be easily shared or used for decoration by young and old.

The illustrations are again as detailed and sublime as before and there's plenty here to keep any Peter Goes fan busy. There's lots of longevity in this activity book, with some of the pages being for younger readers and others for slighter older children. It's definitely one to get if you want your child to grow into it and eventually learn to master every page. The pages can also be easily removed if you want to give out individual pages or even to photocopy if you want to give out the same puzzle to several children. The perfect gift for any Timeline fan or a challenging activity book for older children to enjoy on those wet days in.

The Timeline Activity Book is available to buy now from all good booksellers and from the Gecko website here.

Doodle Town

Doodle Town

By Dominika Lipniewska 

Published by Tate Publishing

From the author of 100 Colouring Book, Doodle Town celebrates the transformative power of drawing. Welcome to Doodle Town, where everyone and everything is a drawing...

Following the success of Dominika Lipniewska’s eye-catching 100 Colouring Book comes Doodle Town, a wonderfully whimsical drawing activity book that invites children to discover how, with just a pencil and an idea, they can transform the world around them. 

Packed with over 60 drawing activities, including creating designs for gravity defying hairstyles, releasing scribble clouds into the sky (who knows what kind of rain a scribble makes?) and playing mix and match with Doodle Town dog owners, Doodle Town is an entertaining and empowering introduction to imaginative drawing. 

This really is the book to go 'doodle crazy' on! Every page invites the reader (or in this case, doodler) to draw all over each page and just let their imagination run riot. There are loads of activities to explore and the large format book allows the doodler to have plenty of space to draw. A great present for any young artists out there or one to simply stop boredom setting in over the Christmas holidays.

Doodle Town is available to buy now from all good booksellers and from the Tate Publishing website.

The Big Book of 100 Little Activities

The Big Book of 100 Little Activities

By Laura Minter & Tia Williams 

Published by GMC Distribution

With the Christmas school holidays fast approaching this book could very well be your 'Get out of Jail Free' card! Packed full of boredom-busting projects for little hands to get stuck in, this will help keep any child busy and entertained!

This bumper book of 100 boredom-busting craft activities is all you need to be inspired during those long rainy afternoons, or times when the little ones are climbing the walls, and so are you. Dip in and discover the eight handy sections: Nature lovers, Messy makes, Rainy day, Sunny day, Little laboratory, Paint and print, Playing and performing and Dressing-up. Each one is packed with things to do that range from spur-of-the-moment creative play, involving little or no preparation, to mini projects with step-by-step instructions.  No matter what your pre-schooler is into, there will be something to stimulate their senses: making giant bubbles, wooden-spoon puppets, cardboard-tube marble run, balloon tennis, bug hunting, firework painting, hanging pompom bees and paper-plate animal masks are just a few of the ingenious ideas on offer.

This book really does have something for everyone - and you don't have to be a child to appreciate how fun these activities really are! I love projects and crafting of all kinds and there's lots in here to even keep me occupied! The projects are easy to follow, with detailed instructions and photographic steps to help you stage by stage. You'll find activities that you can do all year round as well as ones that are perfect at Christmas time and for those summer holidays. The perfect gift for any child wanting to get their hands busy!

The Big Book of 100 Little Activities is available to buy now from all good booksellers and online form the GMC Distribution website.

Fun And Games

Fun And Games

By Alain Grée

Published by Button Books

I love activity books, so when I seen that there was an Alain Grée one available I was very excited to see what it had in store. 

Packed with more than 50 activities compiled by Alain Grée himself, using a huge number of his illustrations created over the years, this activity book will keep a child busy for hours on end (and some adults too!). The activities include spot the difference, matching games and mazes as well as ones involving cutting out, folding and creating objects such as building a paper house.

As any fan of Alain's books would come to expect, this activity book is bursting with his signature style. Each page of the book is perforated and is single sided so it can be removed from the book. A useful addition to an activity book and not something I've seen done in the activity books I've come across. There's plenty to do and will keep any eager mind busy for months, with puzzles, hide and seek and craft games to play. If you're a Alain Grée fan like me you won't be disappointed, though you might resist tearing out the pages! 

Fun And Games is available now at all good bookshops and more information is available on the Button Books website here.

Professor Astro Cat’s Intergalactic Activity Book

Professor Astro Cat’s Intergalactic Activity Book

By Ben Newman & Zelda Turner

Published by Flying Eye Books

Calling all Space Cadets! Think you know your asteroid from your comet? Now you have the chance to flex those brain cells and test your space knowledge using this new out of this world activity book! 

Packed with amazing experiments and thrilling facts, this Intergalactic Activity Book offers a universe of excitement, and is bursting with ideas for a future at the frontiers of space! You'll find all kinds of activities and quizzes donning each page. From designing your own space patch to keeping a moon journal and even learning the NATO phonetic alphabet! After you've successfully completed it you'll be on the next mission to Mars before you know it. 

There is loads here to keep any child busy this Summer. The activities are separated into different parts, which is a great idea for keeping track of progress and setting goals for completion. And unlike some activity books, this is just a beauty to look at. Full of Ben Newman's great illustrations, each page is beautifully crafted. You certainly won't find a better activity this side of the galaxy. 

Professor Astro Cat’s Intergalactic Activity Book is available to buy now from all good bookshops and from the Flying Eye Books website. And in case you missed it, you can get in on the activity action and win a whole heap of Professor Astro Cat goodies by entering the 'Robot Pet' competition I announced yesterday. Full details on how to enter are here. Good luck!

Professor Astro Cat Activity Competition

Calling all Space Cadets! To celebrate Professor Astro Cat's latest publication, Flying Eye Books are giving away an astronomical prize; the entire Professor Astro Cat back catalog, including the fantastic Solar System app!

All you have to do to have a chance of winning is complete the below activity from the new book. Simply draw a robot companion/pet to take into space. It can be as inventive as you like and use whatever you want to draw it. Then give it a name  and let us know what it's programmed to help you to do.

Once you're done, just tweet the final drawing to me (@TheBookwormBaby) and Flying Eye Books (@FlyingEyeBooks) and we'll pick the most inventive one on the 22nd July who will bag all the goodies. The competition is open to UK residents only (sorry!) and children up to the age of 11 can enter. You can download a printable activity sheet from here.

Professor Astro Cat’s Intergalactic Activity Book by Ben Newman & Zelda Turner is out now in all good bookshops and online from Flying Eye Books. Watch out for my review of the new activity book tomorrow!

Creaturepedia Activity Book

Creaturepedia Activity Book

By Adrienne Barman

Published by Wide Eyed Editions

This is the activity companion to the Bookseller Book of the Month, Creaturepedia. Adrienne Barman once again dons her pen to illustrate this fantastic activity book that all Creaturepedia fans will adore.

It's packed full of Adrienne Barman's animal illustrations, informative facts and most importantly lots of fun! The activities include drawing homey nests, prickles on porcupines and decorating butterfly wings. There's also drawing challenges using grids, drawing fishy friends for a hammerhead shark and drawing a meal for three hungry animals. On top of that there's a huge fold out colouring page and a lots and lots of stickers (100 stickers altogether!). 

This will certainly keep any budding artists busy this summer and animal lovers interested to finish the whole activity book. Perfect for those rainy days inside!

The Creaturepedia Activity Book is out now at all good bookshops and from the Quarto website.

The 50 States Activity Book

The 50 States Activity Book

Written by Gabrielle Balkan
Illustrated by Sol Linero

Published by Wide Eyed Editions

There's some great activity books coming out at the moment, they're great for the summer holidays and with a little fun learning thrown in, what more could you want for your little ones. The 50 States Activity Book, aimed at children between 8-12, offers a little bit of everything; fun facts, state trivia, dot to dot and many more activities, with solutions provided at the back. 

This is a summer companion title to the The 50 States book, which I treated myself to when I visited New York back in February, more info here. Both books are lavishly-illustrated, keeping the same style - I especially love the different illustrated type and colours used.

I personally like books that are well designed, insightful, look good and are great when you can learn something new alongside your child. The 50 States also includes a large poster which has a map of the 50 states on one side and suggests adding the landmark stickers which are provided. The other side includes the 50 state flags and a list of all the presidents.

Enjoy a fun packed journey through the States with this action packed activity book - learn about wildlife, people and places unique to the 50 States! Available in all good bookshops or online here.

Pattern Play

Pattern Play

By Nghiem Ta & Danielle Kroll

Published by Wide Eyed Editions

With the summer holidays soon approaching, are you looking for activity books to keep the children busy? For children over 5, and even animal loving adults, Pattern Play could be the answer. There's lots of cutting, folding and 3D animals to be made. 

There's 19 pages of beautiful patterns, easy instructions to follow, little quirky animal facts and stickers to decorate your beautiful models.

Learn about animal patterns; for warning, camouflage and showing off (those show off peacocks!). On the back of each pattern is a clear and simplified animal outline for children to cut out. Fold the animal in half and ta-dah, it can stand up. There's a mix of wild animals, birds and reptiles. 

There's even suggestions for the left over paper with instructions given for papier mâché, collage and decoupage.

The beautiful patterns have been designed by Anthropology textile designer, Danielle Kroll. The pages are vibrant and lovely, they're so lovely that I think I'll find it very hard to actually cut the pages up! The book is a large square shape, with notepad binding, making the pages easy to pull out.

Pattern Play would make a lovely gift for any animal loving child  or young crafter, a beautiful and stylish book that will keep little ones and adults entertained for hours.

Available in all good bookshops or online here.