Meet Banjo Robinson, a rather special cat with a penchant for travelling the world - and writing to his many pen-pals across the globe.

Banjo is the star of a new subscription based service to encourage kids to learn more about the amazing countries around our planet, and of course follow Banjo's travels as he visits different places, experiencing the sights, sounds, tastes and smells the whole world has to offer.

How it works

Once you purchase a subscription and supply some details, your child (or you can purchase it for a relative) will receive your first letter from Banjo - and a truly amazing wall poster-sized Map to help you track Banjo's amazing adventures.

The child will also receive some activity sheets, stickers for their poster, and of course the important bit - a nicely personalised letter from Banjo himself, telling you which country he's in and a few interesting nuggets of information about the place too.

We rather liked the way the letter was put together. The parent or subscriber supplies a few details about their child's likes, hobbies, favourite foods, pets etc, and the letter is written to take note of these. Fabulous and feels instantly tailored and personal. Nice touch that!

Kids can then leave their own letters back to Banjo under the sofa (for you to collect and keep as a rather lovely memory of their early years and imaginations, worth starting a scrapbook to keep the bits and bobs together.

How to subscribe

Subscriptions can be taken out for 3 months, 6 months or a year, with 3 monthly letters from Banjo (click the above link to check the pricing for each subscription tier). Subscriptions can also be bought on behalf of someone else as a gift via this link

Each letter from Banjo will contain some stationery pages, sketchbook pages, stickers and info about other animals - plus the odd surprise from Banjo too, giving kids something really cool to look forward to with each letter and inspiring their own creativity in their replies and with their own sketches etc. As they track Banjo's progress on the poster, there's a great sense of enjoyment to gain from slowly filling in each section on the map, seeing all the interesting places Banjo can travel to, and using that to inspire more interest in our world and the amazing diversity of each country.

Find out more about Banjo

To get you started, the above link gives you an introductory bedtime story to read to your children, all about Banjo and his amazing adventures.

We've seen quite a few subscription ideas for kids, and this is definitely one of the most interesting ones we've been lucky enough to review. Letter writing is a lost art, and it's something we've always encouraged our daughter to enjoy - even the simple act of writing thank you letters to relatives is a worthwhile thing to encourage in early years, so imagine the excitement of receiving letters from a jet-setting moggy like Banjo Robinson!

Find out more about the fab service over at the Banjo Robinson website. 


 (Disclaimer: We were sent a sample letter and the map, activity sheets and stickers in exchange for this review).

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