After finally deciding to never buy paper books for my two year old son again,(due to the fact that they are either ripped or eaten!!!), I came across this rather impressive and reasonably sturdy book.

The book I will review is. "Bob's big magnet book".

Firstly let me explain that the "BOB", that is mentioned in the title is actually Bob the builder.

~~~THE BOOK~~~

The book is 11" in length and 11" in width, and is a hardback edition. The front cover is brightly coloured with the trademarked "Bob the builder" logo in the right hand corner. The remaining space on the cover is filled with a picture of Bob climbing a ladder, surrounded by sunflowers.
The bottom third of the cover encompasses a clear, rigid plastic pouch, which contains 25 different magnets to be used in the book.
You can open the plastic pouch from the inside using a sliding panel, which is reasonably easy to open, especially by a two year old!!

The magnets range from Bob and the rest of the characters to single sunflowers to make your own "Sunflower valley", There are even photographs to add to the "scrapbook" effect within the book.

The book only has 8 pages, and it's only the centre 6 pages that the magnets can be used on.

The storyboard and pictures are all centred around "Sunflower valley", which is part of the newer story lines encompassed within the Bob the builder programmes.

The story,(featured on the first couple of pages), explains a few so-called "photographs" featured in the book, including the shelter for the machines( ie Scoop, Dizzy, Scrambler.... All which are characters in the television series).
The book also goes into some of the recycling issues that are being banded about at the present, it comes across as a beginners guide to recycling!

The centre page is a double paged picture of "Sunflower valley", with the statement, "the valley before any work starts", then encouraging the child to make their own picture of the work that the team might do!!!!

The rest of the book, (as in the first two pages), are laid out in the style of a scrapbook, with photographs, seemingly paper clipped to pages. On the last page there is an introduction to two new characters to the television series.

These characters are - Scrambler, a little blue quad bike that has a trailer for carrying equipment in. His catchphrase is - "Scram to the valley, scram to the valley!" AND - Benny, a bright yellow and very up to date robo digger. His catchphrase is - " Unreal banana peel!".

The final page has two pictures on them, one of the whole team, ( the machine characters , Bob and Wendy), and a smaller picture of Bob shouting something, and the message next to it saying - "Can we fix it? Yes, we can!"

~~~PRICE AND AVAILABILITY~~~

This book was purchased from "The book people", and only cost me £5.00, (the recommended retail price is actually £9.99).

For further information on this or other titles in the series visit,
www.bobthebuilder.com.


~~~CONCLUSION~~~

I really liked the idea of this book, its sturdy enough to cope with a child throwing it around and then there is the added interest of magnets, not something that a young child may have come across in book form.
This does keep my son entertained, a feat not easily achieved, and has yet to show any signs of wear and tear.
There is only one gripe I have about the magnets, even though this is designed for a youngish child some of the magnets are tiny, I have had to confiscate a few of them after catching my son sucking them!
And yes the book does state that it's not suitable for children under the age of 36 months, but if the few smaller magnets were taken out, I feel they could drop the age to 24 months, as my son enjoys it immensely and he is only 30 months old.
Would I recommend it....yes I would just for the uniqueness of it, and unlike the stickers that all the kids seem to go mad for, is reusable, as Mr B the builder would say - "Reduce, reuse and recycle!!!"

Thanks for reading, I hope it was of some use!!!