Jack's Mega Machines - The Rocket Racing Car by Alison Ritchie and Mike Byrne (Simon and Schuster Children's Books)

We're back, did you miss us while we were away on our short break with sporadic internet access (Read: TheStrollingMum monopolising the iPad so I couldn't get any reviews done). Coming back from holiday we had a lovely parcel waiting for us from Simon and Schuster Children's Books containing two of their latest titles. We'll get to the other one in good time, but first we'll take a look at Jack's Mega Machines: The Rocket Racing Car.

Jack is an ace mechanic, and is interested in all sorts of machinery (in fact this is the first of a series of books where Jack explores all sorts of cool and interesting vehicles from racing cars to diggers). Every time he gets something to fix in his garage, he knows adventures are just through the garage doors.

Fixing up a racing car, Jack takes it for a test drive and it magically transforms into the Rocket Racing Car. It can fly, it can zoom, it's the fastest thing in the cosmos!

Entering a race with a whole team of wild and whacky aliens, Jack finds he'll need more than sharp driving skills and quick wits to survive in an outer-space race. Soon he's in at the deep end, requiring his tool kit as well as his fantastic rocket racing car.

Does Jack win the race? Or does he win a lot of friends along the way?

This book is beautifully put together. Some might say it's a bit boy-centric but Charlotte loved it, particularly the beautiful bit of paper engineering at the back, your very own fold-out Rocket Racer to build and fly around the living room (the sticky bits on this take some prying off so take care not to damage your book - and take care that you remove all of it and don't end up with the back page stuck to the back cover like we did, DOH!)

A fabulous energetic story, with fantastic illustrations and a great little model to play with too. Absolutely zoomtastic!

Charlotte's best bit: Without a doubt, the model racer, which she has spent a lot of time 'flying' around the living room with - and handily is just big enough to fit a Playmobil figure. Very cool!

Daddy's favourite bit: I loved the martian monster truck. I could do with one of those for the morning commute / school run.

A ReadItDaddy Book Of the Week!