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bardicbramley 's review for:

Once Upon a Magic Book by Katie Hickey, Lily Murray
5.0

An imaginative and beautifully illustrated twist on the traditional fairytale trope!

Two friends go on an adventure through the pages of a fairytale book, visiting every kind of traditional fairytale setting, trying to escape the witch before she can steal the key and get out of the book herself.

The book is an eye spy type book, with objects to find on each page so that the friends can progress and escape. The book is perfectly tailored for older children who love this kind of activity, which in my opinion is great and most eye spy books tend to be aimed for young children.

The book also ensures that the concept of characters and their morality is questioned and considered by the reader, and even ends with a question about what the reader thinks might happen next.

This would be a great book for teachers to use as a resource in class, with magical scenes that would be easy to create displays of, use for creative writing, or even for other subjects such as counting the missing objects or making a map of different environments in the book.