Where's Kiwi in Playland? product reviews

My two sons love the look and find books so when Where's Kiwi in playland arrived they were ecstatic and opened it right away to work out what they were to try to find. Once they had figured out the characters they needed to spot they were straight into the first scene for trying to track them down. I glanced over at the illustrations and size of the people thinking oh they are going to spot those characters very fast and I was somewhat correct as they picked off a few very quickly but a couple were a little too elusive for them so I sat down to help and it took me a little bit to find the ones they were missing.

We went through the book and the different scenes have a great range of variety of characters and layouts which are bursting in vibrant colors. My favorite one is #8 Spooky gate as it is full of ghouls, vampires, and other creepy creatures and monsters. Once you have finished the main character finding there are lists at the back of the book to spot other objects on each of the scenes which is very common for the look and find books to have the extra things to find which help re-usability.My sons like to sit together and take turns saying something for the other to find even when it's not an item listed to find.

I recommend these books to anyone with young children that want something to stimulate their minds and also keep them occupied and quiet for some time. Where's Kiwi in playland is a great book and my sons have already asked now if they can collect the rest if we happen to come across them which I have sort of agreed to. Each of the books have more than 800 things to spot so they will keep the kids at bay for some time.

I am glad that this book comes in a durable hardcover format because there will be quite a lot of people poring over it, trying to find that elusive Kiwi! The book is inspired by the original Where's Wally? series and is designed for all ages. This is one area where being older does not necessarily make you more able to spot Kiwi in the incredibly complicated scenes - I spent a couple of hours searching before handing the book on to other family members for a second opinion, and have to confess that I did not find him once! There is no convenient cheat sheet at the back, so you just have to persevere until you are successful.

I think that is the reason there is a separate section at the back of the book with other challenges. Some of these are easier than finding the elusive Kiwi. I managed to find a few of the items listed there, and felt very proud of myself! There are ten sections in the book, each dedicated to a different storyland theme, and every section has its own list of challenges - so there are 100 altogether. I was incredibly proud when I was able to find a few of these, even though Kiwi himself was still hiding out.

Each double-page section spread is bright and busy with plenty of detail. The section headings are numbered and appear in a box at the top of the double page. There is also supposed to be a clue to Kiwi's whereabouts in the form of a rhyme - however, that did not help me! It took a concerted effort by two children and one or two adults before Kiwi started to emerge. There are still a couple hiding.

We agreed that it was a mistake to give the book to a child to see how quickly Kiwi could be located. This was a recipe for frustration as the child's attention span timed out. Better to tackle the pictures together, use the extra search suggestions at the back of the book, and even add a few more. What did work well was Mr Three or Miss Five choosing an item on the page then challenging an adult to find it too. That was fun because of course the children knew where to look. Another solution was for the adult to find Kiwi first then give the children some clues. This resulted in a real sense of achievement once he was pinpointed.

Apart from the challenges, the children just enjoyed flicking through the pages and looking at the scenes. There was plenty of detail, and each time they looked at a page they saw something new. Mr Three loved counting all the spaceships on the Spacehub Heaven pages. Miss Five was kept busy finding all her favourite fairytale characters on Storybook Time. As for me, my favourite was Music Jive. I even managed to locate Kiwi there in the end, with the assistance of Mr 12.