Book Review - Usborne Puzzle Adventures

Here at Imagining History, we love Usborne books. When it comes to non-fiction history books for children, they offer amongst the best books in the world. When we’re researching a new history blog for our site, you’ll often find us thumbing through well-worn copies of “Timelines of World History” by Jane Chisholm, “Prehistoric Britain” by Rachel and Alex Firth, and “The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Greece” by the terrific trio of Struan Reid, Lisa Miles, and, once again, Jane Chisholm. Exhaustively research, beautifully made and presented, cram-packed with fascinating facts, these books are ideal for children – and for us too! But, if you want to add a little puzzle-solving action to your historical learning experience, Usborne also have you covered! We recently discovered Usborne’s Puzzle Adventure series and, quite frankly, they’re so good that we just had to share them with you, our dear readers.

Usborne very nicely sent us a lovely stack of Puzzle Adventure books to sleuth and solve through, and, thanks for several of them being packed with historicalyness – we're pretty sure that’s a word – we wanted to talk about a few of them in this review. Which one’s you ask?

Well, that would be:

Escape from the Greek Myth Monsters by Russel Punter

The Dark Dark Knight by Lesley Sims

The Mummy Mystery by Russel Punter

Each book is gorgeously illustrated, of course, and offer a multitude of corking puzzles. And – even better – those very same puzzles help young readers learn about history! In a sneaky kind of way, the kind of learning where the reader is having so much fun, they don’t realise they’ve just injected some historical trivia directly into their brain.

An introduction to the Ancient Egyptian god Sobek and a puzzle to solve? Nice work "The Mummy Mystery!"

For example, take “The Mummy Mystery”. In this book, our favourite puzzle is The Code in the Shrine. Here the reader is tasked with solving a code made up of hieroglyphs. The puzzle is accessible, based around the hieroglyphics being presented in alphabetical order, but through solving it a young reader learns about the written language of Ancient Egypt – something they may never have even encountered before! Even better, the author and illustrator use actual hieroglyphs in the puzzles. Whilst their meaning is simplified, readers are still becoming familiar with the types of symbols Ancient Egyptians valued.

An exciting extract from "Escape from the Greek Myth Monsters"

Meanwhile, in “Escape from the Greek Myth Monsters” are returning heroic duo of Jack and Jade provide a wonderful introduction for young readers to the myths and legends of Ancient Greece. Featuring a who’s who of the monsters of Greek Mythology, including a gruesome Gorgon, a menacing Minotaur, and a conniving Cyclops – good grief that was a lot of alliteration -  the book brilliantly weaves together a compelling variety of puzzles. Navigating a labyrinth, surviving attacks from Stymphalian birds, avoiding deadly sirens, the amount of mythological figures and ideas seamlessly presented to a young reader is really quite impressive! Indeed, if your child is starting an Ancient Greek topic at school, there’s probably no better way to introduce them to the era and the concepts they’ll be learning about than furnishing them with a copy of “Escape from the Greek Myth Monsters” and leaving them to it for an hour or two!

This puzzle from "The Dark Dark Knight" will certainly tickle the brain!

If British Myths are more your thing – Okay, British with a heavy historical French influence too – then “The Dark Dark Knight” provides a stupendously readable introduction to the Arthurian Legends. It’s all here; Merlin, Camelot, King Arthur, the Grail, though presented with such a deft touch that few children will realise they’ve been learning a whole lot of historical stuff whilst having fun solving all the puzzles. Our favourite cryptic conundrum? Well, that would be the Monk-themed brainteaser presented by Brother Ben. A cunning little wordsearch that also turns into a maths riddle – what’s not to like?

So, if the child in your life loves history and puzzles, then the Usborne Puzzles series will delight and inform them in equal measure! For only £5.99 a book, you really can’t go wrong. Highly recommended.