Published by Egmont
ISBN: 978-1-4052-3085-2
Here’s another great activity book for three year olds (and over) that’s a huge bunch of fun and–as the subject is also that rarest of animals: a British kids franchise with his own newsstand comic–well worth a mention in my never-ending crusade to teach kids to love comics, books and reading.
In case you haven’t seen the stop-motion adventures of Shaun the Sheep let’s recap: He first appeared in the Wallace and Gromit film A Close Shave in 1997 (he’s the one that got shorn – get it? – in the knit-o-matic machine). After a guest-shot on the 2002 series Cracking Contraptions he finally graduated to his own show on the BBC in early 2007.
Shaun is a sheep of singular intellect yet he lives on a farm where he has worryingly surreal adventures which pay mute tribute to those timeless silent classics of slapstick comedy. They are extremely entertaining for both adults and kids alike.
This attention-riveting tome is a Sticker Activity Book, which means that there are full colour peel-off adhesive images which can be placed in relevant – or not – places to great effect. The body of the book is a series of black and white pages stuffed with colouring puzzles, spot-the-difference tests, mazes, join-the-dots, finish-the-picture scenes, tracing games, word-searches, hidden-object quests, counting games, comparison quizzes and even a fold-out race-track. I’m nearly three hundred and fifty-two and even I found this to be a dazzling display of captivating teasers. And some of the kids who get this book will want to graduate to the comic afterward…
In a world where books are increasingly alien to people, the combination of great characters, compelling stories and pictures, plus every darn trick in the book, is a welcome tactic in getting kids reading. Forget video games, buy that child a book!
© and ™ Aardman Animations, Ltd 2008. All Rights Reserved. Based on a character created by Nick Park.