Monday 8 July 2013

Belle and Boo Play Day by Mandy Sutcliffe (Orchard Books)














Here's the first of our Belle and Boo reviews to celebrate the awesome "Belle and Boo Blog Tour" week we've been included in.

And what better way to start than with a sticker dressing up book - the sort of book that is a complete siren song to Charlotte, who absolutely loves anything to do with fashion, dolls or cute bunnies. Beautifully presented, it's your chance to dress Belle and of course Boo in a variety of groovy outfits, with tons of accessories and other stickers to make each scene come alive.

We're relative newcomers to the Belle and Boo phenomenon but it's great to see Charlotte enthusiastically attacking these books with gusto (you'll see our "Belle and Boo - My Favourite Things" review coming up very soon on the blog).

The things we always look for in a sticker book are all ticked off here:


  1. Sticky stickers. I know this sounds like a no-brainer but you'd be surprised how many sticker books seem to use flour-and-water glue rather than something a bit more sticktastic. These stick a treat
  2. Easily detachable sticker sheets. An absolute MUST, you should be able to get the stickers out of the centre pages of the book so that the child can use them on the pages they're supposed to (but then again there's also an argument for letting them run riot and stick stickers on any old page, of course!)
  3. Appeal once the book is 'done' - It always seems a shame to have to throw these things away once they're finished but in the case of Play Day you have a story to read even once the stickering is done and dusted, and lots of scenes to look back on so it's worth keeping around. 
If you have sticker-obsessed girls at home (and this book pretty much is a girl's book, though again there's no reason why boys couldn't enjoy it, naturally) they will love entering the world of Belle and Boo and playing dress up with her and her rabbity chum. 

Charlotte's best bit: Belle's beautiful slippers, so cute!

Daddy's favourite bit: Any book that can give you an hour or two of total concentration and quiet from your child has to be an instant win, surely?

(Kindly sent to us for review by Orchard as part of the Belle and Boo Blog Tour)

Don't forget to visit the other blogs on the tour for the rest of the week!

Monday 8th July – Read It Daddy! (Oh yes, that's us!) (http://readitdaddy.blogspot.co.uk/)

Tuesday 9th July – Lovely Loll at Story Seekers (http://storyseekersuk.wordpress.com/)

Wednesday 10th July – "The Don" of children's picture books, the incomparable Book Sniffer!
(http://booksniffingpug.blogspot.co.uk/)

Thursday 11th July – Awesome Anne-Marie at Child-Led Chaos (http://childledchaos.me.uk/)

Friday 12th July – Leaving the best till last, the megatastic Mel at Library Mice