Don't Look In This Book by Samuel Langley-Swain

My little ones LOVE this book, it's such a different style of book with different adventures but you can imagine you're own endings. You can make up so many activities to go skiing with each story too. We notice new things every time we read it and my oldest has favourite pages he gets super excited about. The whole concept of "don't look inside this book" is quite cool. My oldest loves saying it and it makes it feel like such a special book to him.

If yoyr looking for a book that bit different with some great play options, this is totally for you.

Oh my goodness, I love this book! Every single page is bursting with inspiration for play and story-telling! The illustrations alone are the perfect prompts for inspiring all kinds of magical discussions and it’s impossible not to get excited about all of the fantastical stories that are just waiting to be created.

With every turn of a page, there’s a totally new theme and story waiting to be discovered, and I really love that the illustrations for each page are in different styles. The whole book is absolutely perfect for any child who loves to make up their own narratives for playing and telling stories – and it’s the perfect little nudge for children who sometimes need a little inspiration!

Thank you Babipur for choosing us to review this book!

I read this with my 5.5yo and just tuned 3yo.

The cover certainly intrigued us - we had fun guessing what could be inside.

If you are expecting a story, then this book might be disappointing. Instead, it’s more of a suggestion of different stories you could invent yourself. The last page suggests talking, drawing or writing inspired by the book, and I also think play is a good medium for exploring further.

The text on each page is a short rhyming couplet, which speaks directly to the reader, encouraging your child to think about their own ideas. I’m not a massive fan of rhyming books, but it did create a kind of continuity across the book that worked with the images.

The different pages are illustrated by different people, so each is distinctive and grabs your attention in different ways. Our favourite page involved tigers and a train, which are both popular in our house. I think this was also one of the pages that had more of a question that could be explored by the children in their own storytelling - some of the other pages felt a little less like questions to us.

If you want to use a book as a starting point for play or writing, this one is really nice. I could imagine using a page to inspire an invitation to play. My children chose the tiger/train page to explore and we used toys to invent the story. I took photos of their play and my 5yo helped add text to the photos to create his own book, which he really loved.

In summary, this book is a bit different, but if you dare to look inside, you’ll find lots to talk about and inspire you!

This book is a unique take on writing and if you want a story you may need to have a rethink and be prepared to go on a different kind of adventure! This book is brilliant for sparking discussion and the development of vocabulary and even has a bit of rhyming going on! With a different adventure on each page it certainly made my little boy keen to turn over and I know it’s a book we will turn to again and again! As far sharing some images of the book it’s best you “don’t look” as it’ll spoil the fun!

We really enjoyed reading this slightly unusual book. Unusual in so much that it is constructed from a range of rich and varied story starters, rather a complete story in its own right.

The children loved exploring ideas of where the tigers on the train might have come from, or how we would feel if a monster came and turned our house upside down. It’s a great book for prompting discussion and imagining what might happen next.

The children loved completing the rhyming elements too, especially after reading it a couple of times. Oh and of course, when we are told ‘don’t look in this book’, what do we want to do? Open it, and get reading of course!