Santa’s Irish Adventure – A Book Review

I love all things Christmas, I really do, and when it comes to buying gifts I put a lot of thought into choosing them. So I was delighted when the good people at Digital Scribe invited me to review one of their Personalised Children’s Books.They are an Irish company based in Bray, just up the road from me, so without a second thought I said yes. You can follow them on Facebook here!

I ordered one for my son, as he is the only child for whom we have not yet bought a personalised book (middle child and all that). I was very excited waiting for it to arrive and when the brown paper parcel arrived, I was over the moon. The weight of the package caused me a moment’s pause as it was very light. I had expected the book to be hardback, as our other two personalised books are, and the price of €15.99 led me to asssume as much. I was pretty dissapointed to discover that it is a paperback.

What did impress me when I opened the package however was the personalised letter for my son from none other than Santa! I know Conan will get a thrill when he sees it. Another plus was the photo of Conan that appears on the front cover, along with his name in the title – any child will be delighted to see their name in actual print as well as a photo! The book itself captures the excitement of Christmas really well, and the title character (Conan) is very involved in the story.

Unfortunately there are a couple of things that I think let this book down. The story itself is not adventurous and it ends very abruptly. The artwork is underwhelming – Santa’s elf is green for example – and the child appears as a hooded character that is kind of creepy (although I am not sure children would find it so). I also think that having been marketed as a personalised book to treasure, the quality is poor – the fact that it is paperback is disappointing enough but the paper cover itself is cheap; I don’t think it would last longer than a few reads in my children’s hands. I also think that the RRP of €15.99 is way, way too high.

To finish on a positive, one of the great things about the story is that it takes the lead character all around Ireland from Newgrange to The Giants Causeway to The Cliffs of Moher and on to Dublin, so when we read it we can talk about those places and I am guessing the children will be pretty excited about having been to some of the same places as Santa!

I genuinely love the idea of this book, but don’t feel I can recommend it in its current incarnation. However, with a little tweaking and a hard cover, it would certainly be something I would consider sending to my nephews in Australia!

Thanks for reading,

Aisling

Disclaimer: I received a free personalised copy of Santa’s Irish Adventure for the purpose of this review – all thoughts and opinions however are my own. I usually get the kids to read the books I review but as this is from Santa, I can’t give it to them before 25^th December. I will of course update this review after the children have read it.