Freak369's Full Review: John Speirs - The Best Halloween Hunt Ever
I almost forgot about this book until I started cleaning behind the bookcase and found it - seems that it fell there when someone bumped one of the stacks and there it sat for the better part of four months collecting dust. I can’t remember when we got this book but it was part of an after holiday sale at a local bookstore - that much I remember vividly because I stood there for the better part of a half hour trying to find all the things that are hidden in the pictures. This is sort of like the “I Spy” books where you have to find items in a picture - these are illustrations instead of photos so I guess it’
s more like “Where’s Waldo” but you get the general idea. This is something that kids love to check out because - even if they think it’s hokey when they first look at it - they get into trying to find all the items on the page. Even though we’ve had this for at least three or four years I’ve yet to make it through the whole book and find all those batty bats!
The Best Halloween Hunt Ever
Like I said, this is a “find it” kind of book - you are given a list of things and it’s your task to find them in the drawing. That might not sound all that interesting but when you see the format of the book you’ll understand why kids love to read this and look for things. You are out to help John, Sara, Tina, Alexis and Roy find things - well, actually it’s these five that have hidden things in the pictures. At the bottom of each list you are asked to see how many batty bats you can find. The one thing that I really like about this is that instead of words you are given small pictures to work with - this helps the younger kids who might not know ‘pumpkin’ or ‘monster’ - beside that, if you have the image to work with it eliminates a lot of confusion. A great example of this is the Halloween greeting cards - there are several different ones through the book, if they just said “Find the Halloween greeting card” you might not be circling or pointing out the correct one.
The drawings are really crazy too - from a jam packed schoolroom to a Halloween parade, a pumpkin patch to a haunted house. The illustrations are so detailed and intricate that sometimes you forget what it is you are looking for because you see so many little things in it. One of my favorites has to be the maze that the kids built in the schoolyard - there are so many interesting images on the walls of the maze that it’s just as much fun to check out the stuff that isn’t on the list as it is the stuff that is on the list. There are a total of eleven pictures to go through in the book and each of them are simply amazing to look at. You are given a list of things to search for - sometimes as few as eleven sometimes as many as fifteen. At the bottom of the list you are asked to find the batty bats but don’t get too freaked out by this one, at the end of the book there is a list of the number of bats in each picture if you get stumped.
The one thing that I love about the book is the attention to detail - when you look at the picture the first time it seems like it will be pretty easy to spot things but the more you look for them, the more you get sidetracked. Once kids have made their way through the book and have memorized where things are they can start to look for other things - like counting the number of pumpkins or ghosts. This is something that can add a lot of value to the book. The answers to the “puzzles” are given at the end of the book The items you are supposed to find are circled but since this image is in color sometimes it’s hard to see the circles on the page. Even so, it’s nice to have the answers to them - I really hated some of the “I Spy” books that didn’t have the answers because no matter how much time I spent looking for some key or mouse, I could never find it.
The Bottom Line
There isn’t a lot of reading involved in this book so the younger kids can have a lot of fun with it without being puzzled by large or complicated words. The drawings are what really make this such an interesting book - they are detailed and intricate but extremely fun to check out and look over. All of the adults that saw this book loved it and couldn’t put it down, most of them did cheat and look at the answers but hey, that just goes to show how well thought out these drawings are. If you are looking for something to keep the kids attention for a while this is the kind of book that you want to try to find. The book sells for $3.25 [this is a soft cover book] and to me it’s worth every single penny. I’d recommend this for kids ages five and older but even kids younger than that might have a blast going on their own little Halloween treasure hunt!
This bestselling search-and-find book is filled with fun Halloween-themed puzzles and now comes with shiny foil stickers. Full color. Consumable.More at Buy.com Marketplaces
This bestselling search-and-find book is filled with fun Halloween-themed puzzles and now comes with shiny foil stickers. Full color. Consumable.More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.