Where's Kiwi Celebrating? product reviews

This book has brought so much laughter, raised voices, screaming, races and made sure the competitive nature is still alive and well in our house. We have spent rather a lot of time hunting for various items on the pages over a couple of hours and keeping the fun going making up our own searching games.

The first time I opened the book it was not long before my eleven year old was sitting next to me and we were racing to find the Sporty Sheep, Tricky Tuatara, Gumboot Guy, Mystery Moa, Wacky Wizard, Kiwi's Girlfriend and of course the Kiwi. The competition was so fierce that even when my husband cut his finger and was asking for a plaster neither of us would give up the advantage and go get him one instead I yelled for my youngest daughter who was downstairs in her room to go fetch it while we continued the battle. After grabbing the plaster she then threw it at her daddy and sat down and it was then the three of us trying to find the elusive creatures.

I found the trick rather early - rub your eyes and they just appear in front of you. The pages did not take very long when you have three pairs of eyes eagerly searching trying to be the victor - that was until we could not find the kiwi and then discussions started about the issues of the book mainly being they really needed to have an answer section showing where they were. After, what took way to long I found him we put the book down only for it to be picked up the next day where we found the extra section. Now this took a little more skill as you had to remember what you are searching for and when you are looking for one particular person wearing particular clothes it can be quite hard and I would of preferred this section was put on to the page in question.

The pictures are very cartoonish and they are nice and vibrant. So much is happening in the events and it is quite nice to just sit back and take it all in. There is a lot of detail added to each page. It is also great seeing so many happy excited faces. At the top of each left page was an explanation in rhyme of the event in question - however I have to admit this was not read until some days later.

However, the Easter Egg Hunt has a major bobo on it and it drove us crazy. You are suppose to find '3 Yellow Balloons' but there are only two in the crowd unless you count the man holding the balloon stack and then there are four. We spent hours looking for that elusive hidden balloon and I swear it does not exist. Unless it was suppose to be three green balloons?? Again an answer section would really have helped. I also have to admit finding the three ducks took me way to long to find and I feel so silly not picking it up considering both my girls got it straight away.

This book has been a lot of fun and even when their cousins have come over it has not been long before this book has been pulled out and hearing the laughter coming from it. Besides the answer section and finding particular people both of my girls love it and have asked for more books like it. I love the kiwiana vibe to it and seeing events that mean something to us. I personally loved the Chinese New Year and Beep Beep Beach Hop. A great fun book that everyone in the family will enjoy.

All the members of my family love the Where's Wally series, so this kiwi version of the spot-the-target series had them all arguing as to who would be the best person to review it. I settled the argument by suggesting they all give me their feedback so I could get a rounded view of what worked for them. And as to who would keep the book - it could circulate round the family so they could all have a turn! I started with Mr Ten and Miss Seven, who were very happy to be the first to look at it.

Because the pages are so busy, there was no arguing - there was so much to look at that they were happy just locating various graphics within the pictures and pointing them out to each other. They wanted to show me too but I asked them not to as I wanted to do some searching myself when they were done. There are two pages with checklists for when each item is found, so they decided to get their mother to photocopy them so they could have a competition and not write on the book itself as that would spoil it for other people.

Mr Ten thought the pictures were quite realistic for cartoons - they were not so stylised as to be unrecognisable. When he first did a set of similar puzzles, he was just six, and took forever to find things. Four years later he has a quick eye and tends to spot things before anyone else. However, he still finds that he is challenged when doing puzzles like this. He also pointed out that there might be a spelling mistake on one page - if the Field Days are meant to be the Waikato event, it is written Fieldays. At ten you know things like that.

Miss Seven loved the pictures too. She thought they were just the right level of difficulty, and she assured us that her favourite picture was the Christmas scene because it included her all-time favourite person, Santa Claus. With Christmas pending, she is well and truly into the preparations and the anticipation of trees and Christmas stockings and decorations everywhere. She loved the idea that different festivals are included because her friends all come from different cultures and it was nice to see the way different groups celebrate. Both Miss Seven and her brother said they would like to have seen Hallowe'en included as a festival as well.

Next, I visited the twins and they had fun trying to locate different items as well. They got a bit frustrated however because their little brother and sister wanted to look too, but they were not quite old enough to spot different items. This was annoying for the older girls, so I said I would bring it back another day and we would organise a different book for the other two to keep them busy while we did some kiwi hunting.

Finally, I took the book home and we did some searching ourselves. I am not very quick at picture puzzles because I go cross-eyed after a while, and the other two (also adults) were not much better. We agreed that Mr Ten was probably the champion at locating things quickly. But we also thought that the book is a quality product - it has a good strong hard back binding, and the pages are glossy and brightly coloured so will appeal to people of all ages. My personal favourites were Matariki Magic and Earth Day, but the others picked different favourites. Definitely there is something for everyone in this book.