Super Happy Magic Forest by Matty Long

The happiest of places, the Super Happy Magic Forest is home to the happiest of people. But one day the source of all the happiness (the mystical crystals of life) go missing. So five willing heroes (a unicorn, a fairy, a gnome, a faun and a mushroom) band together and go after the magic crystals, battling against all the odds they reach the source of all evil, Goblin Tower. Except the crystals aren't there!

I won't ruin the ending for you (of course it all comes right in the end!) but would just quickly like to point out that there are several similarities to Lord of the Rings in this brilliant picture book. That's not a nit picking thing, since I'm rather impressed that it has managed to work so well. The combination of artwork, speech bubbles and text gives it a fresh feel and there are quite a few contemporary references to modern films which is really quite clever. I think this is quite an ambitious story which manages to work really well within the picture book confines. My two daughters (four and seven years old) have certainly really taken a shine to it and indeed this morning I heard them playing a version of the story combined with the Trolls movie plot - which they're currently obsessed by. So the highest praise indeed - re-enactment!

I love the fact it works on a variety of levels, you can just read the simple story, you can add in the funny speech bubbles and you can also work out a couple of puzzles as you go. It's sort of a picture book version of an early graphic novel. It would make a great interactive app!

So in conclusion we love this book! And it's being very well used. We got our current copy from the library but we'll be purchasing it as soon as we send it back. Matty Long has a website which has several of the pages from the book so if you want to try before you buy take a look! And the sequel Super Happy Magic Forest and The Slug of Doom came out last year too, we will be hunting it down very shortly!