Thursday 18 October 2012

Sticker Dressing - Spooky by Louie Stowell and Diego Diaz (Usborne Publishing)














Year after year, the shops seem to be more and more stuffed to the gills with Halloween things - fortunately this doesn't just extend to horrible cheap plastic halloween costumes and dreadful sweeties, but also some surprisingly brilliant book ideas for your little ones to get spooked by as All Hallows Eve arrives.

Usborne's 'Sticker Dressing' range is always good fun, and Charlotte's grampy (Dodo) bought her this rather excellent 'Spooky' edition, featuring all the mainstays of a good halloween romp.

What I like about the book is the multi-layered approach to the stickering. The artwork is fantastic, and as you add stickers to each scene to 'complete' it, you can build up some brilliant transformations. See a scrawny skeleton transformed into a scary mummy - or a graveyard turning into the Skeleton World Cup.

Imaginative and full of flair, Sticker Dressing - Spooky is still great fun even after your little ones have stuck all 200 stickers down and made some funny scenes. Great character names and plenty of opportunities to then go away and draw up some spooky scenes of your own all add to a book that's sure to keep the collywobbles away.

Charlotte's best bit: Spooky Ghostly Tutankhamun

Daddy's favourite bit: The great transformation from scrawny youth to fully fledged werewolf at the back of the book.