My Stencil Kit by Herve Tullet (Thames and Hudson)

We're doing a bit of a rain dance on the blog at the moment, hoping that 2016 will be the year of the activity book. We had a LOT of fun with activity and art books in 2015 and here's a fantastic one to kick off the new year in style.

Herve Tullet is the genius creator of hundreds of fantastic children's books and he's now come up with a genius way for kids to draw and design their own stories, even if they're not super-confident in their art skills.

"My Stencil Kit" comes with 6 huge die-cut boards containing 200 stencils, covering a wide range of subjects from alphabet characters to animals, from curls to geometric shapes and tons of other fantastic designs in between.

The stencil sheets come with a nice large format book (which would have been even better if it had been spiral bound but you can't have everything) full of interesting and intriguing 'scenery' to get your designs off to a roaring start.

We couldn't resist diving right in with our pencils and pens to put those interesting and intriguing stencil designs to good use. More artistic kids (and adults) will love adapting the designs to produce more fully fleshed-out works of art but even if you just love making patterns and nonsense drawings (who DOESN'T love drawing giraffes body-surfing on the roofs of cars) then you're going to find tons and tons to do in this interesting new art book.

Charlotte's favourite bit: Some cool background designs to really get your artwork off to a flying start.

Daddy's favourite bit: A great new activity book that enables kids of all abilities to design brilliant artwork and scenes to tell their own stories with. Absolutely absorbing and beautifully designed by a true genius of children's art.

(Kindly sent to us for review by Thames and Hudson)

"My Stencil Kit" 

Written and Illustrated by Herve Tullet

Published by Thames and Hudson

Publication Date: 29th February 2016