It's a Book of Two Halves (The Big Book of Crazy Mix-ups - Nick Sharratt)

Member Name: noodlesandwich

Product:	The Big Book of Crazy Mix-ups - Nick Sharratt
Date:	20/05/09 (112 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, Silly,

Disadvantages: none I can think of

Nick Sharratt's Big Book of Crazy Mix-Ups is a book which combines different images through the simple method of splitting the page in half. It's spring bound with resilient, (they need to be), thin cardboard pages and the vibrantly colourful cover shows lots of the possible combinations you get inside.

The first page opens with a picture of a giant purple spider, 'Eek!' it says, 'A wriggly spider'. The page is split across the middle so if you then turn the bottom half of the page you are greeted with 'Eek! A wriggly ice cream, or else if you turned the top part you would get; 'Yummy! A strawberry flavoured spider'. Other combinations you may end up with, (I just picked three at random), include; Goodness! A grey haired car, Cor! An exploding baby or Yippee! A wibbly, wobbly copter. It's a very silly book and I like it, oops, I mean my daughter likes it.

I don't think I would have chosen to get this book for my daughter if she had not chosen it for herself by becoming engrossed in it in the library and spending lots of time playing with it and laughing. When the time came to leave she told me her daddy wanted to see it, so of course we brought it home with us. I would have thought it would be too confusing for a very young child, however my not-yet-two year old proved me wrong. She particularly likes the 'Eek! A wriggly' part of the spider page so she can make lots of wriggly things like a wriggly granny, a wriggly cat, a wriggly fish etc and even though I don't think she'd seen a volcano before she likes the exploding part. She also likes the bumble bee page and to do lots of things to the car, such as to make it a bumble car for example.

The illustrations are are bold, bright and deceptively simple. They are well drawn on a light blue background which can serve as a sunny day, water or wallpaper. Now I have just noticed that the cover illustrations are different to the inner ones as they all have very different backgrounds, but of course that isn't possible otherwise the combinations wouldn't work, it does make the cover more colourful though.

There are twenty full page images which makes for a huuuuuge number of potential combinations, (someone work it out and tell me).

My daughter is not too young for this as I might have thought, she 'gets' the silliness of it and has sometimes spent quite a while messing about with it, all on her own, which is a bonus for any busy parent, stops me sticking the telly on for her when I want to do some reading and rating on Dooyoo! (joke). Actually, I got it out for her this morning and although she had a good giggle, she is already noticeably less interested in playing with it on her own, she wants her Mam to read it with her and do the silly voices. We've had hold of our copy for about two weeks. Perhaps the novelty value is wearing off and it's better that I got this one out of the library than made a full price purchase.

Currently available new from Amazon for £6.99.
Further details (from Amazon):
Spiral-bound: 44 pages
Publisher: Scholastic (5 May 2008)
Product Dimensions: 29.6 x 21.6 x 1.4 cm

Summary: Delicious! A cheese and tomato bee