Geronimo Stilton Special Edition: The Journey Through Time product reviews

My son loves Geronimo Stilton and this book is definitely one of the more exciting and interesting Geronimo stories. In this book Geronimo and a few of his family members as well as Professor von Volt, set off on an adventure through time to find the answers to a couple of historical questions. They visit three different destinations - the prehistoric period, ancient Egypt and medieval England.

This is your typical Geronimo adventure - fast paced, action packed and hilarious. There are lots of detailed illustrations to keep young readers engaged as well as changes to font type, size and colour which brings each page to life and emphasises different words, making it easy for my son to follow along.

The book blurs the line a bit between fact and fiction and try explaining to a 6 year old that time travel isn't real but it does provide a lot of opportunity for discussion about various times in history, different cultures and practises and there's lots of additional information about each time that they visit, which I found very interesting. My son particularly liked the prehistoric period. I mean what little boy doesn't like dinosaurs and he had great fun guessing whether the dinosaurs that Geronimo came across were carnivorous or herbivorous.

The book is quite long compared to other Geronimo books but the chapters are fairly short and manageable for young readers. This will definitely be a book that we'll read over and over again and no doubt it will spark new topics of discussion each time we do.

This was my first chance to read a Geronimo Stilton book as I have young children (4 and 2). From the very first reading of with my four year old, we were both hooked. I really do appreciate it when I find something that captures us straight away.

Geronimo, Thea, Benjamin, Trap and Professor von Volt take us on a great adventure through three parts of history to find the answers to things that happened so long ago. My son loves dinosaurs and the fact that that part of the journey was at the beginning of the book, caught his attention and added to his captivation with it all. My husband and I have been to Egypt, so that section was of particular interest to me and I was also able to tell my son about our personal experiences of Egypt as we went though the story. We loved how each mouse had its own character and personality. Some of the emotions and attributes of the characters are ones that we can see in ourselves and children can also relate to.

The way the story is written is fantastic. There is a lovely combination of fiction and facts intermingled. I had to clarify with my four year old that the ancient Egyptian's weren't mice. This brought on a discussion about the story part of the book and the historical facts that form a basis to the story. Fact versus fiction is an important thing for children to learn and understand and I think this story works so well for this topic. The separate boxes on the pages helped to highlight the facts and learn more about the items that were brought up in the course of the story. My four year old found that some of the boxes were of more interest than others and at times asked for me to continue on with the story rather than reading the facts. I think an older child would have had significant interest in these boxes.

I love the way that many words on each page are accentuated with colour and with variation in font and size. This, along with the illustrations and fact boxes, break up page from having solid text. This will really appeal to children. The vocabulary in this book introduces children to a wide variety of words and I am sure that exposure to this and other Geronimo Stilton books could only do good things for a child's written language. The descriptions of what is happening in the story are rich in language and are not dumbed down to child language.

For a child to read this by themselves I would think it would fit into and 8-10 age range. In saying this, my four year old son has thoroughly enjoyed the book being read to him. From the mouth of my son, who is still learning to analyse the books that we read together, "I love it so much because it has dinosaurs and mice in it" "I love the flying reptiles". It can't get more simpler than that for him - he loves the book! I think Geronimo Stilton books will grace our house again and again in the years to come. Reading The Journey Through Time was a pleasure and the hard cover on this book enhanced the experience even more. It is amazing how something so simple can make such a difference!