Autumn Publishers recently sent us some of their new scented range of books – Smellessence – to try out. We have had other books from Autumn Publishers in the past and found them good, so were really excited to see what these new ones were like!
We were sent the Theo story book, which was the first Scented book which was launched (I remember seeing it on Twitter at the time and thinking it looked good!) and also sent a selection of 4 of the new Splotz books – Splitz, Blossom, Bubbles and Ice.
Theo is the story of a little dog who has lost his sense of smell. The book takes you along on a stroll through the park with him while he sniffs all different things to try and get his sense of smell back. The child can smell many of the pages, with scents like honey, roses and ice cream.
The illustrations are very cute and Theo seems like a loveable dog! I liked the idea of having the book scented as it’s something different than all our other books, and adds an extra sensory dimension to the story. My boys enjoyed sniffing the pages, and the scents are quite pleasant, and definitely strong enough to notice. I would say each of the different scents are quite similar, but you can see a bit of difference particularly between the sweet honey, and the others.
My children wanted the story to go on for a bit longer! But there is another book in the range now, Theo at the seaside so we may have to give that one a try.
As for the Splotz books, the first thing my boys got excited about was the scented stickers at the back! Each book has two pages of scented stickers, when you rub them the scent is released more. They do smell quite strongly and the scents are very distinctive and quite recognisable as mint, banana, cherry and bubblegum flavours.
So before we got started reading the books, my oldest wanted to have a go with the stickers and made a little picture
He was quite interested in the scented aspect of them and kept sniffing all of them. They do smell quite nice, so I have to admit I was tempted to do the same too.
As for the stories, each book focuses on a different Splotz character and follows a similar format whereby the character needs to watch out incase they go “Splotz!” – which they all do at the end of each book, to release their scents. Each one has a different personality, whether its shy or giggly or rushing around too much.
Each of the books are written in rhyme and with a lot of repetition, so that the child starts to anticipate the catch phrases which are going to come up. Once they have read one, then they will understand the format and know what to expect with the others too, and with my children I found they were happy to listen to all of the stories because although they are similar the character and scents are different. My boys favourite character was ice, the minty scented character and my 4 year old was the one who enjoyed these books the most.
There are more varieties available too, Coco, Honey, Bluze and Mucky which we have not tried yet and I have seen there are activity sticker books out for the 4 characters which we did try, which I’m sure my boys would enjoy. The scented aspect of the books definitely added an extra element of fun and I would recommend them if you fancy something a bit new and different.
If you fancy treating the kids to some of these, Autumn Publishers have given me a code to share. Have a look here and use the code “halfterm” to get 30% off at the check out.