Holiday diversions part 2

Solid reading matter is all well and good for holiday distraction but sometimes something lighter is called for. It's hard to sustain concentration even on wizard boy H.P. at cruising altitude, and whilst endless games of Top Trumps and Uno could get us through the rest, sometimes a mother needs to rest her eyelids. So into both boys' rucksacks went a couple of Usborne sticker books (an old favourite)  and into Bill's went two Mega Mash-Up books (a new punt by me).

Continuing a previously mentioned theme of my love of Usborne; just how good are their sticker books? Really good I reckon. So nice in fact that Father Christmas had to bring one for the husband at Christmas time because he was getting sticker book envy. At moments of stress he likes to unwind by placing toga-ed Romans in the Senate or Bath house, or matching Gladiators together whilst making fighting noises.

What I Like About Them. A List.
1. The stickers actually stick. It's surprising how often this cannot be taken as a given in a sticker book.
2. The variety and number of stickers to be placed on each scene and the pleasing level of detail you can build up. One book can sustain an entire 2 week holiday of first sticking fun and then back story discussion.
3. There are dress up sticker books for boys! I used to love cutting out the clothes with little tabs for paper dolls and hanging them on perilously. It was one of the activities I had quietly let go of ever revisiting (along with very detailed colouring in of Altair pattern books) when I realised I was to be a Mother of Sons. Thanks to Usborne's Soldiers, Knights, Pirates etc. titles I can share the joy of choosing who should have which breastplate/sword combo.
4. They're even a bit educational but only a bit so that's okay.

On to Mega Mash-ups by Niklass Catlow, Tim Wesson and...Bill. These are a bunch of new 'draw your own adventure titles'published by Nosy Crow that offer pleasingly silly juxtapositions. I got Bill 'Robots V Gorillas in the Desert' and 'Romans V Dinosaurs on Mars'.

We've had cheapy draw-it-yourself books before but they've never been much used partly because the stories offered have been pretty yawn inducing and partly because the pages were intimidatingly blank enough to make the task feel overwhelming I think. These however were an instant hit with the Bill boy.

A passion for drawing is a recent discovery for him and the books provide just enough space and support to encourage him to draw just what he likes; ie. exploding banana monsters and mutant robot dinosaurs. They're in a simple chapter book format and full of silliness and poo and Tom and Jerry style fighting and poo and silly insults and poo, pressing all the right buttons in terms of text and graphics to enchant a 7 year old boy. There's also a section at the back of each book with a visual dictionary to help develop your cartoon drawing skills. Over the week he probably only completed about a third of the pages so there's plenty to come back to too.
I'm going to be giving a lot of these as birthday presents I think.

Thanks to such distractions I got to read 950 pages of Anthony Trollope. Well packed Me though I say so myself.

'Romans sticker book' (amongst many, many others) pub. Usborne Activities isbn 978-1-4095-3072-5
'Romans V Dinosaurs on Mars' by Niklas Catlow, Tim Wesson and Your Child (amongst several others)
pub. Nosy Crow isbn 978-0-85763-001-8

Holiday diversions part 1

Listen. What's that noise? That's right. Nothing At All.

 The Fellow Reviewers have returned to school. There are no explosions, out of control boogying, stick fights or donkeys' braying to be heard. Just the faint twitter of birds. And the distant rumble of the local double decker bus route. And the constant drill and electric saw of the builders putting down new paving slabs outside. Ah blissful peace and quiet.

We had a great week walking in the mountains north of Madrid with Gallido the donkey. The only downside being the difficulty of persuading my children to walk anywhere now WITHOUT a donkey. I am looking into the by-laws on donkey husbandry in suburban back gardens but am not all that hopeful. Memories will have to sustain us.

I thought I would do a post or two on our holiday reading/entertainment matter; sharing what I have found useful to pack into a Ryanair baggage allowance to sustain two boys over the course of a week of no in flight entertainment and Only Foreign Telly. I invite you to tell me your secrets too. I will disclose that though my children are (to Bill's great disgust) DS- less, they did have access to my ipad and some dvds to take us through the siesta hours of chorizo and churro digestion. I don't want you to get the idea that we are irredeemably wholesome.

Firstly I give a massive Halleleuia to whoever came up with the concept of Red Fox mini treasures. £1.50 for a classic picture book smaller than a postcard; and loads of titles. Over the years we've built up a reasonable collection of these- but 10 will still fit comfortably into the space taken up by one conventional paperback. For a boy like Eddie who needs his book tower for sleep it's the perfect portable option. Obviously  BIG picture books are best but there can be a curious charm to the scaled down version too. I am very fond of the detail  to be enjoyed in Benedict Blathwayt's illustrations for his 'Little Red Train' series. Even full size there's a fair amount of nose to page contemplation to sustain you, but shrunk to a 6th the size it becomes eye exercise comparable to hand making lace: 'How many pigeons can you count Eddie?' (that will see us through from in flight  snack trolley to scratch card sale walk through).
Be warned they're pretty sneaky though. You buy the mini version cos it's a bargain and then fall in love with the book and buy the full sized version when back at home.

Similarly we have some mini 'Where's Wally?' which came with their own handy magnifying glass. I have to say that's too migraine inducing for me but the boys don't seem to care.

Between those and one decent sized paperback anthology much pleasure has been sustained up until now. This holiday marked something of a transition though, in that Bill now needed his own supply of paperback 'chapter' books made space for. Which meant less space for MY paperback 'chapter' books.
Hmmm this is how dark devices whose name begin with K get bought isn't it?

Some of our small but perfectly formed collection.
Including 'Faster, Faster, Little Red Train' by Benedict Blathwayt pub. Red Fox isbn 978-0-099-47566-8