Bamboozled product reviews

I was lucky enough to be given a copy of this book to review and I have to say that it's a very definite 10 out of 10 for me ...picture books don't get much better than this, it's awesome!

I first introduced this to a large group of children at a preschool where I work but quickly discovered that it's not the best book for large groups - I had a whole heap of 2, 3 and 4 year olds all shouting at once about the quirky and odd things in the book, and it was just too funny and exciting to try and keep them quiet and just listen!

But later in small groups (and I've now read this book lots and lots to different children) it worked really really well. The children were absolutely fascinated with all the strange things going on at Grandad's house and I have to say that I loved finding them too! In fact after all the times I've read this book, I'm still discovering new things that I hadn't yet noticed.

I then introduced the book to my 7 year old who found even more things that I hadn't... it became a great treasure hunt and a fun time of laughter between the 2 of us. The punch line is something you wouldn't expect and creates even more hilarity as apparently everything else is normal! The odd things even continue to the back cover which is printed upside down!

I highly recommend this book for something with great re-readability and as being great for a wide age range of children from around age 3 upwards. It also has great potential as a special book that can be shared between a grandparent and grandchild too.

Back in High School I was really into art, and one of my favourite subjects was art history. Through that subject I was introduced to a life-long love for Surrealism and Dadaism. For me, the best kind of art is the kind you have to keep coming back to. Maybe it is silly, or jarring but it is always engaging. Bamboozled takes all of the stuff I love about Surrealism and presents it in a puzzling picture book.

This soft cover book is a 21st anniversary edition. That means that the story has actually been around for a while. But I am ashamed to admit, this was my first introduction to the book. I sat down with Miss 3 to have a read. She enjoyed the story, and pointed out a few odd things in the pictures. Ultimately though, she didn't get as much out of the story as Miss 8 did later in the evening. Miss 3 didn't double-take in the same way.

When I read this with Miss 8, she was in the middle of trying to do a drawing. I thought I would see if I could disrupt the process, because to me if the book was good then she would stop drawing. And that is exactly what happened. She stopped drawing, her pencil sliding off her finger at one point because she was too busy saying "what?!" or laughing or doing a double-take at something.

This book makes for quite a long read when you really look at the pictures too. I think the first page was about 10 minutes, of pouring through every inch of the book. It was funny too, because at the start of the looking there were things I just didn't see at all. But then as we got further into the looking, I would see more and more. I told Miss 8 that the chances were, we would re-visit the book later and see even more new things. This was true of just about every page!

The whole way through, my daughter was trying to figure out the puzzle. What was the odd thing? There was so much odd stuff going on, that the big reveal got a lot more laughter still. The thing it is, is not that odd in my house, which made it even funnier. After the story there is also a few pages of behind the scenes history. These were really fun, and I liked seeing the artistic process, as did my daughter. She would really like to illustrate books one day, so she liked seeing the planning pages in particular.