"Story Out of the Box: 80 Cards for Hours of Storytelling Fun" by Nicky Hoberman, Deeny Leander and Hiromi Suzuki (Laurence King Publishing)

If you're still stuck at home with the kids getting under your feet, having a neat activity or two will help stimulate their creative minds.

If your kids (like mine) love a bit of creativity and storytelling, then "Story Out of the Box" by Nicky Hoberman, Deeny Leander and Hiromi Suzuki is just the ticket.

Like the fabulous "Art Out of the Box" (which we reviewed last September) this small but powerful source of amazing inspiration comes in the form of a card game.

Ready your imagination, let's take a look at some of the cards inside...!


Split into subject and technique cards, these writing prompts aren't just great for kids, but for all creative writers who want to stretch beyond their comfort zones. It's an absolutely brilliant and fun game to play along with the family, even if you might find some of the prompts a bit whacky and 'out there' - it's a fun challenge to see what you can do with them.

We had a lot of fun with this, in fact we figured that if you combined both sets, you could come up with the PERFECT way to devise new awesome storytelling ideas, combining the visuals of "art out of the box" with the wordplay of "Story Out of the Box" to really push your creativity to the max!

Sum this up in a sentence: So much storytelling potential packed into such a small package! Isn't that always the way with great things?

"Story Out of the Box" is released on 4th May 2020 from Laurence King Publishing (kindly supplied for review).