The Missing Astronaut: Mystery Puzzles for Kids (Puzzle Quest)

Spent £900 on a holiday but 8yr old preferred doing this. Next time I won’t bother with the holiday and will just buy one of these.

I bought this to keep my 9 year old occupied whilst we were away for a few days and she loved it - there are lots of different puzzles to go through in the book ending in solving a bigger riddle - fab have bought some more ,

My daughter loved it and solves the puzzels efficiently using the simple explanations provided

This book is mostly puzzles with little story line but my 8yr old had fun and asked for another. Can't argue with that.

This is one of a four-book series published by Collins that combines a reader-centered story quest with puzzles and clues to get you to your goal. It’s well thought out and offers hours of engaging fun. My only criticism of it is that it’s printed on low quality, uncoated paper and can only be used once.The premise of this story is that the world’s most famous astronaut has gone missing in outer space, and the reader is tasked with finding and rescuing him/her. To do so, the reader must first train at Space Academy before blasting off on their quest.The challenges comprise a wide range of puzzles involving numbers and verbal and non-verbal reasoning. So, there are mazes, word searches, number puzzles, sequences, sudokus, spot-the-difference and more. Each successfully completed task provides you with a letter to log in the clue logbook. When these are transferred into the grid at the end, you have the key to the ending of the story.The answers to all the puzzles are included at the end of the book, so children working independently can easily check if they’re on the right track. I imagine children at the lower end of the target age group of 7+ would need help both to read the story and the instructions.As mentioned, I would like to have seen this printed on better quality paper and with the use of color to make it more appealing. However, this would have pushed up the price, which I guess would be hard to defend with this being a single-use purchase because of the need to write in the book.That said, I do think it’s worth the £5 price tag given the depth and breadth of content that is both fun and educational.Thanks for reading my review. I hope you found it helpful. You can find more reviews of children’s books and puzzles and educational toys and games on my Amazon profile page.

This is a puzzle book first and foremost, with a little bit of second-person story at the start of each double page to give a little bit of narrative and context to what would otherwise be a random selection of puzzles.The puzzles are from a good variety of disciplines. Some of them are word-heavy and will potentially help with spelling, others are number-based (though there aren’t quite as many of those), and others involve shapes, pattern matching etc. Whether deliberately or not, it does feel like there are echoes of the curriculum in here, not so much the verbal reasoning but definitely some non-verbal reasoning, some English and some maths. I wouldn’t describe it as overtly educational, but if it helps kids to read and think about words, it can’t be bad as practice.Some of the puzzles encourage kids to write the answers on the pages of the book itself, for example with the word wheels. As a result this is a bit of a ‘one-shot’ book, once a child’s done one of the puzzles then neither they nor their siblings will be able to go back and do it again. This book is presented as a book rather than a magazine- black-and-white, book binding and so on- but it should be for kids who are old enough to know they shouldn’t write in books normally, so you might need to explain that this book is an exception!The storytelling is just a series of loose knitted sci-fi tropes but it works. Unusually, the reader is the only character in the story, so it does feel a little bit sparse on character and characterisation and at times really does read more like a junior training manual than a story.There are a lot of pages and getting through them all will take any seven-year-old a while. It’s a nice twist on the puzzle book format, and you’ll get more out of this, both in terms of entertainment time and educational value, than you’d get from a magazine that will cost around the same price.

This is a lovely little book and I think it offers good value for money. Compact, it is ideal for travelling and holidays and I recommend ages 7 and upwards could access this book.This is an activity book which has a narrative running through it (quite loosely). It is best to complete the activities in order but, with the answers at the back, this can be overlooked if the puzzles are too tricky. Puzzle types include: hidden words, mazes, wordsearches, sudoku and hidden objects. There are a great range of activities and I think this book should have broad appeal.With plenty of illustrations throughout the book, it remains engaging and eye-catching. There is also an extra quest to complete as you seek extra clues whilst you work your way through the book.This is a great way of keeping children entertained and maybe even inspiring reluctant readers. However, my only criticism of this book is the format. You need to choose your writing instrument carefully: ink pen will bleed through the pages; a pencil needs to be sharp enough otherwise it won’t show up. Therefore, to make this activity book perfect, it would have been better if it was formatted like one: thicker, white pages; hard cover; spiral bound. Any of these features would make the book more durable and easier to write in.Apart from the format, I really like this series and it has proved popular with my children.