Penelope Strudel

Penelope Strudel and the Birthday Treasure Trail is a fun book! I love the illustrations and the mansion; such a cool place! Finding all the clues and discovering all the interesting stuff on each page was delightful. I’m sure children would love this!

This fab interactive puzzle book will challenge children to solve puzzles, search and find objects (like in a Where’s Wally book), in order to progress through the book.

A great way to encourage problem solving and challenge young minds. I know I, myself, enjoyed searching for the objects on the pages and completing the puzzles, and I am 34!!

It is illustrated beautifully, with fun, humorous characters to go along with the objective of the pages. The challenges and puzzles are easy enough for primary aged children to follow, whilst providing them with challenge and clear instructions on how to progress through the pages intended puzzle.

I, myself, will be preordering this book for my puzzle-loving 8 year old nephew, as soon as I have submitted my review.

This is sure to keep your little people busy and engaged!

** I received an advanced copy of this ebook to read and review. Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for allowing me this opportunity. **

One step shy of being a really good, entertaining purchase, this demands a lot of browsing time. It's one of those Where's Wally/Waldo books, with double-page spreads full of chaotic little incident, and a check-list every time of things for you to have ticked off. But this time they're presented as part of a series of puzzles a girl has been given by her Uncle – she enters the domain of each diorama, locates everything, then gets the impetus to turn to the next one, which is itself a puzzle of the more traditional kind, such as an easy cypher or spot-the-difference. The only difference I would wish to have imposed on this book is this final conceit – we're supposed to be stuck without solving each and every one of these puzzles, and we cannot move on to the next room without knowing which room it is we turn to. Well, it's the one over the page – this is presented in order, as young readers might expect, but I am sure there would have been a way for it to be jumbled up and for us to have to jump through the hoops of the game to turn, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style, to the right section.

That said, this has a great sense of achievement I am sure – the spotting sections take some good amounts of time, without being absolutely impossible, and the lead-in puzzles are varied and have a good consideration of the target audience too. Books of this kind are ones librarians are most reluctant to purchase, for the simple reason someone will always ink the answers on to the page and ruin the fun for everyone. So the onus is on you to put your hand in your pocket – this didn't get my five star rating, but it was beyond four.