Title: J. K. Rowling’s Wizarding World: Harry Potter Winter at Hogwarts
Illustrators: Insight Editions
Publisher: Walker Books
Genre: Colouring, Children’s activity
Sweet Strawberries: 
Review: This is a fun colouring set to give to any Harry Potter fan before Christmas! What you get is a small box wrapped in shrink wrap to keep it safe. Once you take the plastic off you have a very sturdy box which I have to admit was smaller than I thought it would be – between A5 and A6 in width! The box opens up with the top coming off like a flap rather than a separate lid. Inside you get a colouring booklet, gift tags, string, a wooden Firebolt to put together and instructions. The box has an inset to make it look like there’s more in there than there is, but I don’t mind.
The booklet for colouring is very fun. It contains wintery scenes from Harry Potter. They actually look like scenes from the movies (I’ve not read the books yet) and all contain either snow or Christmassy and wintery things. There’s Ron and Harry receiving jumpers, snow scenes of Hogwarts and the area, Hagrid pulling in a tree, etc. The booklet is quite small (it had to fit inside the box) but contains a lot of pages for its size. each page is double printed but are so thick they are almost card. There’s no back page to the booklet though and it feels like a book missing it’s cover, so the last image on the back has some tape on the edge that holds the booklet together, but again for a small booklet of this size there’s a lot of good colouring and I believe the pages could take some felt pens (although I can’t comment as I haven’t used them for this).
The gift tags are made of thick paper too and are already cut out and waiting for you to just press them out of their pages. there are a lot of gift tags each with a browned colour and many Harry Potter images on both sides. The gift tags can be coloured in but given the size of the images they are very small and a bit fiddly. But I love how you get so many, and the fact they are both detailed and have different designs as well as the thread to put on them!
The wooden firebolt broom is the final piece in this set. You can colour it in and then press it out. There are instructions on constructing it. It’s a bit fiddly due to it’s size and you can leave it as it is or give it some colour but while a non-Harry Potter fan may not be impressed, I think anybody who is would love it! I’m a bit in the middle, I think if I was a bigger fan then I’d probably be gushing, but at the same time this thing is very small and just ends up a bit of a small ornament once you’re done.
Overall this is a great gift set to get someone for Christmas, especially a Harry Potter fan. I’m not a fan myself and have only ever seen the movies (so far, although I am planning on reading the books! 😀 ) but I still enjoyed them and love colouring in these scenes. The set feels a bit small though and surprised me at first as I expected something a bit more given the price but it’s still good for a fan.
My only other concern is that younger children may not find it so easy to colour this in due to how fiddly some of the smaller images are being in such a small booklet, so perhaps this is better for slightly older fans. Overall it’s a nice gift set, but be aware that you’re not getting as much as you think so I wouldn’t recommend it at full price, but slightly discounted and it’s a nice gift set.
-Review first appeared online December 2016 – now republished here.
What do you think of this activity kit? Do you like Harry Potter? Let me know what you think in the comments below 🙂
The Strawberry Post 