My son and I often cuddle up on an evening and watch an episode of The Simpsons and my son really likes the show. When I saw The Simpsons annual in the book people for £2.99 I thought it seemed a perfect buy for my son.

The annual is a hardback book and around A4 size so it is pretty standard looking really. On the front of the annual there is a picture of what looks to be a happy Simpsons family embracing but then you notice Homer strangling Bart in his typical "why you little....." way that fans of the show will be familiar with! This really amused my son as we hadn't initially noticed this when we first looked at the book so it is done in quite a clever way! The book has a RRP of £7.99 but can obviously be purchased much cheaper than this.

I think that I was expecting something completely different than what we got with this book. The book is basically just a comic book with around six or so cartoon strip stories featuring characters from The Simpsons. As it is an annual I expected that there would be a quiz or a word search or other interactive things in amongst the cartoons like with other annuals we have had in the past but there is nothing at all like that which I feel is a real shame.

My son and I have spent some time looking through the book with me reading some of the stories to him but if he is looking at the book independently he soon gets bored as I think the pages are a bit busy looking and so difficult for him to understand as he hasn't really come across comic stories before. I would certainly say that the annual is more suited to an older child.

Despite my issues with the annual I do think that it seems a good quality book. The pages are thick and the pictures are glossy and colourful. Also within the book we see a good mix of characters with their even being a short one page comic story from itchy and scratchy! The comics are quite long and span out over a good few pages for the most part and I think this is why my son loses interest quickly too as it is all a bit much to take in for him. There is plenty of variety in the comic stories though with regards to the characters we see so there are ones which focus on The Simpsons family mainly whilst others may be about Homer, or the children alone.

I do think that for children perhaps aged from eight upwards the book would be a hit as they could follow the comics easier than my six year old. I will keep hold of the book as it may be something that my son grows in to however for me this year it was a wasted purchase which I think would have not been the case had it contained some puzzles and quizzes as an example.

Thank you for reading my review!