This month, a reward for getting outstanding marks in her school work, Little Miss Playground (LMP) received her first ever Owlcrate Jr box! The theme was Storytellers Toolkit and the book was said to be a bit of a scary one. Now LMP is still 7 years old and Owlcrate Jr is for 8-12 year olds.  She’ll be 8 soon, but I was worried about the scary content as she can be sensitive to these things.  Before buying the box I reached out to Owlcrate to speak with them about this and they were amazing at discussing things with me. Their customer service staff had read the book which really helped with the decision to go ahead as they advised that because LMP is a fan of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books it was on a par with them. The book is for up to age 12 so it will be a tandem read for us as her reading stamina isn’t quite there yet – but that makes it all the more fun (and allows me to skip over any bits that I think she may not like when it’s my turn to read)

But onto the box.  I think it’s safe to say that her face was priceless when it arrived!  The box itself is beautiful and is tagged “may contain magic” The first item LMP found were the Eeboo Create a Story Cards, these were an announced item and are great fun, the them was fairytale and they were played with pretty much straight away – they are fantastic for prompting their own storytelling and because of the quantity of cards it’s unlikely that the same selection of cards would come up.  LMP says  – I like playing with my brother doing this because it is very funny when we saw some of the characters.  The next item was the 2nd announced item which was a large size zipper pouch by Owlcrate, a lot of thought clearly went into this as it is big enough to fit all the writing items from this months box into. LMP says:  I like the fact that it’s really big and there is lots of room inside it and I like the detail on the front and on the back.  A set of pencils was next out of the box by Jubilee Design Studio they each have a beginning of a story to them “once upon a time,” “a long long time ago” and “it was a dark and stormy night” LMP says: I like that they all say different things on them and my favourite one is the black one as it says a long long time ago and it reminds me of Star Wars.  Other items include a note book, an eraser and a badge.  LMP says, then I got my notebook and it’s got a lot of pages in which is very useful to write in, my moose bumps rubber I like because it looks like a real book and it smells nice and the Typewriter badge I like because it has a typewriter on it and has paper in the background and I think that this typewriter in from A series of unfortunate events because sunny uses it (we’ve just finished the Austere Academy)

The book this month is Nightbooks by J.A White, the blurb is: A boy is imprisoned by a witch and must tell her a new scary story each night to stay alive. Alex’s original hair-raising tales are the only thing keeping the witch Natacha happy, but soon he’ll run out of pages to read from and be trapped forever. He’s loved scary stories his whole life, and he knows most don’t have a happily ever after. Now that Alex is trapped in a true terrifying tale, he’s desperate for a different ending–and a way out of this twisted place.  LMP says: The book I got was called nightbooks and my favourite bit about the front cover is that it has lots of books and the picture is shaped in a key hole shape, I liked that it was hardback and I got a signature from the author.

Having found all the items in the box we had a little chat…

Me: What did you think of the box, was it all you were hoping it would be?

LMP: I love it!  It’s so much better than I imagined!

Me: What was your favourite item?

LMP: The Book!  I love the cover as it feels shiny on the black part and then different on the keyhole

I think it’s safe to say we have one happy little girl in the bunker, she’s looks longingly at my boxes when they arrive and I’m so happy she got to experience the feeling of discovering each new item.  Her happy face was utterly priceless as she took out each item.  I would love to get them for her more often, but even with a 15% discount code it was still £34 including shipping.  But it’s her birthday in November so never say never 🙂