Labyrinth by Theo Guignard

Labyrinth by Theo Guignard
Buy Labyrinth by Theo Guignard at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Children's Non-Fiction
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: A visually stunning book, that just falls short of perfection for different tiny reasons, but which sets the benchmark for future books like it.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 32	Date: March 2017
Publisher: Wide Eyed Editions
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9781847809988
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Of all the books published for people's paper-based hobbies when I was a youngster, it's remarkable that all of them have been revisited and revamped. I say this because they certainly weren't exactly brilliant fun back then. No, we didn't have quite the modern style of colouring-in books, but they were available, if you'd gone beyond 'join the dots'. I read only recently that origami is allegedly coming back – and I remember how every church book sale for years had Origami, Origami 2 or Origami 3 paperbacks somewhere for ten pence. But the ultimate in paper-based fun back then was the use-once format of the maze book. This is the modern equivalent – but boy, hasn't the idea grown up since then…

It doesn't sound much, fourteen puzzles, but they're enough. For one thing they're huge, in this large-format square hardback – about 22 inches by 11. For another, they're gorgeous to look at – while we had different shapes of puzzle, some in a snail's shell, perhaps, or shaped as a dragon, here you get a computer game landscape with a dragon, complete with Escheresque 3D pathways. There's a traditional top-down one of a complex path through a crowded beach, and a maze of wormy things, but the perspective on the 3D ones is what I'll take with me from this book (as well as eye-strain from the final one, as seen on the cover). There's one based on underwater life, a maze of weird roadways, and – as the creator is French – something like the Centre Pompidou.

But there's an and to this. You also have to spot various things, once you've done your route-finding. It's only a short list every time, but it can add minutes to your task before you can turn the page. But that comes with a but – it did raise a few tiny quibbles with me. At least once what was sought was down the mid-spread page fold (as indeed was a wall in one labyrinth I just didn't spot), at least once you're asked for something yellow and it proves to be orange, and at least once on the answer sheets provided it gave us a mark indicating something we weren't even asked to seek.

I don't think such instances are worth badly marking a book down on, but I felt they kind of spoiled my experience – imagine being the consoling parent introducing the idea of colour-blindness to a child when they've wasted hours looking for the expected shade. And you would get a Nobel Prize if you could do away with the problem of things hiding in centrefolds. M. Guignard certainly deserves a prize for the spread of landscapes and artwork here – generally very bright and colourful, but ranging from the human to the very computer-designed environment that the young will only find most appealing. With the Where's Wally bonuses this volume has a lot of fun to provide. It's part of growing up when you discover/learn that mazes are always dead easy if you start at the end and work back to the beginning – but you didn't hear that from me. What you did hear is my final verdict – this is a Wii game, when I grew up with Etch-a-sketch, things have progressed so far and so well.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

And yes, I did laud this book for having a great dragon before realising a whole book full of dragon mazes exists – Dragonmazia by Rolf Heimann.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Labyrinth by Theo Guignard at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Labyrinth by Theo Guignard at Amazon.com.

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