All Aboard The Discovery Express: Open the Flaps and Solve the Mysteries: 1

First of all this book is stunning, high quality coupled with outstanding artwork and pop up features. I bought this book for my daughter who is pretty infatuated with it. There’s so much information and knowledge to soak in that this book will take some time to be fully read. Highly recommended for inquisitive minds. It’s so good I even bought other books by the same author for my nephews.

Fantastic layout, great vintage feel with beautiful illustrations and tonnes of interesting age appropriate facts.Has been read and enjoyed countless times. Highly recommend.

Bought as a Christmas present for my 6 year old but I know he is going to love it as it's such a wonderful book. Lovely illustrations, bright colours and we'll made.

Fantastic book!!

Beautiful book

Lift the flap books are for toddlers? Wrong, ‘All Aboard The Discovery Express’ by Emily Hawkins, Tom Adams and Tom Clohosy Cole shows that they work brilliantly for older children too. This book is part mystery, part history book. You step aboard a magical locomotive that travels on the tracks, but also through time. You have to find a missing professor and he has left clues through history, each one takes you to another time and place.‘Discovery Express’ is essentially an educational book that has been given a fantastic format. This is a book to behold. The A4 hardback version of the book is a masterpiece of good looking publishing. The star is Cole’s illustrations that are crisp and evoke a timeless feel, which is useful when traveling through the ages. The flaps themselves also work brilliantly. Each double spread has a large illustration. But hidden amongst them are well designed flaps. Behind these is where the real information is and authors Hawkins and Adams go into a lot more detail. The use of flaps is a triumph as it means that the clean lines of the drawings are kept, which still allowing the book to be educational.There are some neat puzzles hidden behind various flaps that will tickle the inquisitive 7-10 year old. Some are quite straight forward, but all require a little knowledge such as geography or maths. The entire book treats the target audience with respect and aims to cater for children who enjoy learning for the pleasure of it. It is particularly of interest to those with a love of mechanics and engineering, a lot of the places that the Express visits happen to coincide with great experimental breakthroughs.In all, ‘Discovery Express’ is almost the ideal book for an educational minded child, but there is a flaw with the layout. It has happened before with Wide Eyed Publishing that they don’t make the text big enough, or use strange colourings. In this case it does not make this book unreadable, but it is a tricky read for anyone with colour problems or poor eyesight. It is a shame to alienate some users just because the font could not be upped a little, there is plenty of space. Still a lovely book though.

I was not expecting this book to be as large as it is but this does not detract from the fun factor. My daughter at 8 years old finds the book fascinating but we have read it in small bites as there is quite a lot to take in for that age. This book is so beautifully illustrated. The "lift the flap" element is one of the few books targeted at older children that has this feature - kids still love "lift the flap" books. The puzzle on each page was fun to solve, some being more difficult than others.I would say that this book is for 7/8 year olds to 13years as there are some fantastic facts about inventors and inventions. There really is so much for children to learn from this book. Overall the concept, the presentation and language used is perfect.

I love this beautiful book, it's an absolute delight to pick up, open and discover.The book is a large hardback, with gorgeous 'Golden Age of Steam' theming, with glorious illustrations and clever hidden flaps incorporated into each page, which have interesting facts about the history of transport, and are also part of the treasure hunt that you embark upon to find the missing Professor, who has set the clues for you to travel across the globe in search of him.The quality of this book is excellent. I'd have been absolutely delighted to receive this as a gift. It'd be perfect for a Christmas present for just about any adult who enjoys beautiful, cleverly designed treasure hunt books.This book is going to be kept with my special collection of favourites as I like it so much.5 stars