My daughter recently discovered Hello Kitty and is now really keen on her. It makes a nice change from Peppa Pig so I'm not complaining - yet... A friend had bought this for her own daughter and when I saw it I thought it was a fantastic idea and bought one for my daughter as well. She was given it just after her third birthday.

---About Hello Kitty:
Hello Kitty is a Japanese creation of a little white kitten who has appeared in animations and is added to a variety of products. There are several different incarnations of Hello Kitty and she appeals to young children, teeneagers and adults. Hello Kitty has a twin sister Mimmy and lives with her parents. She has various adventures and diffferent friends who join her.

---About the product:
The Hello Kitty Busy Book is a board book about Hello Kitty which comes with a section at the back holding a large plastic folded playmat and 12 little figures. The book tells different small stories about what Hello Kitty and her friends and family are doing which correspond with the rooms shown on the mat and the characters in the box. The characters in the box are Kitty and her sister, her parents, grandparents, a mouse and what look like a squirrel, a sheep and three assorted bears. The characters (excluding the mouse) are about .75-1 inch high and the mouse is about .25 of an inch. They are all made out of plastic and are quite lightweight with good level of colourful details on each. They resemble the characters in the book very well. The playmat is approx 80cm x 65cm when unfolded but folds up to approx 20cm x 15cm to fit in the back of the book.

---Our experiences:
I was really impressed with this book after seeing it at my friends house as I thought it was really good value for money as the set only cost me £5. My daughter was a little unsure what to make of the book when she first got it, but was soon interested in taking out all the small figures to play with them. She was excited by the playmat and she soon discovered that they represnted different rooms which there were stories about in the book.

She has had the book now for 4 months and continues to play with it on a regular basis. She regularly plays with the characters outside of the playmat and enjoys doing role play and imaginative play with them. They are small enough for her to put them in a little bag and take them out with her and she can use them in her dolls house as well. At the moment she is not too interested in the book although we have read it a couple of times. It does allow your child to act out the stories in the book using the charcters and the mat, but at present my daughter is happy making up some of her own.

---And finally:
I would highly recommend this book for any Hello Kitty fans. The book is suitable for children over the age of three because of the small characters in the book. The mouse especially is very small and I would not want to give this to a young child as it could easily be swallowed. If you can get this book for £5 (I got mine from Sainsburys) then it is well worth it. The Hello Kitty toys on their own cost a lot more than this and as it includes the book and then playmat, it is very good value.