When I was asked to review a range of Smellessence Splotz books, published through Autumn Publishing, I have to say I was rather intrigued.
Smellessence state: We are the leading publisher of ‘scented’ books for children that are fun, engaging and encourage children to read. This new and exciting technology involves children in the story and allows them to interact with the books on a multisensory level.
I’ve not come across books that smell before and wondered what my Monkey bookworm would make of them.
We were thrilled to receive the full set of 4 Splotz story books – complete with scented stickers.
http://www.ovder40andamumtoone.wordpress.com Splotz collection
The Splotz books are written by Smriti Prasadam-Halls and illustrated by David Boyle – there are 4 colourful characters – Ice (with a nice Minty scent), Blossom (who smells of Cherries), Bubbles (yep, you’ve guessed it, she smells of bubblegum) and Splitz (banana boy!). The small little story books are 24 pages long and aimed at the over 3-year-old, so perfect for a nearly 3 and half year old Monkey.
http://www.over40andamumtoone.wordpress.com Splotz characters
I have to say that these books were an instant hit with Monkey, he found the stories really funny. The rhyming text kept his attention and he was so surprised when we got to the last page and he could actually SMELL something when each of the characters when Spoltz! As readers of my book reviews will know I never reveal the ending for the books I review, so if you want to find out what makes these cheeky little characters explode – go buy the books 🙂
http://www.over40andamumtoone.wordpress.com Sploz stickers
To top his day off, each book comes complete with 18 stickers which you can also rub to release the character’s smell. He got straight to sticking them all around the living room and kept going back to sniff them – they thoroughly amused him. They even made smelly decorations for his dinosaur cave on Saturday! I have to say, that 5 days after the first ones were rubbed, they still smell as strongly as they did last Thursday – can’t be bad.
The Splotz collection retail at £2.99 (2013 price) and Activity books are also available in the same series.
We were also sent a Scentsational Storybook Theo at the Park, written by Jaclyn Crupi and illustrated by Aurélia Verdoux.
http://www.over40andamumtoone.wordpress.com Theo at the Park
This 24 page book is also aimed at the over 3 year olds and is a lovely story about a little dog called Theo who has lost his sense of smell. We join him on his journey as he retraces his steps to find his smelly nose, with lots of scented surprises for us, the readers, along the way. I really liked this book, the story and the vibrant illustrations. Monkey loved trying to work out which pages had the smelling ‘scentsations’.
http://www.over40andamumtoone.wordpress.com Theo – pages
Theo at the Park retails at £6.99 (2013 price) and I can thoroughly recommend it.
disclaimer: We went sent all the books mentioned for the purpose of review, our comments though remain our own honest opinions
Over 40 and a Mum to one 
These look great, I think I’d struggle with the banana one though. I can’t bear anything that smells of banana!
I’m a bit like that with cherry, but I survived the experience
i liked the banana smell pippa! but it is quite realistic though so if you don’t like bananas you probs wont like it. we tried these books and and found them good, i think the stickers element added a lot of excited for my lot – they love anything with stickers, and scented stickers – even cooler!! lol 😀
Yep, Monkey really liked the stickers and he whole ‘Mummy I smell something’ experience. I loved the Theo book – honey – yum yum
They look really good – such a different idea 🙂
They are lovely, Monkey thought the Splotz books were fab – he loves the word, conjures up all sorts of mischief 🙂 The Theo book is lovely, the smells are just an added bonus
I’d be with Pippa on the banana book. Great idea though
They honestly don’t smell too much to offend, I was worried about the cherry but it was fine
It’s a really novel idea. I know I loved ‘scratch and sniff’ stuff when I was a child, even though back then it all smelled like armpit!
🙂
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