Spider-Man 3: The Reusable Sticker Book

Background

This book is the odd-one out in the series of Spider-Man: Color/Activity Books (HarperCollins), and not only in terms of size. Certainly at 9.5" x 12" it towers above its friends, but it has also target a totally different price/quality trade-off, along with completely different content.

Story Details

While the other books in this series feature 32 pages (plus stickers in one case), this book is only 12 pages plus a centrefold page of 55 stickers. All the pages are full-color on high-quality stock. There's very little content in this book. None of the puzzles or word games or coloring from the other titles appear here. Instead, everything is specifically linked to the stickers.

The stickers are specifically designed to go with the book, and feature Spider-Man entirely solo. In fact, Spidey is the only character to appear anywhere in this book. On the first two-page spread, decide which of the six stickers for this page belong in which spot on the page. On the next page use stickers to play tic-tac-toe. On the next, place stickers to put Spidey in the picture taken from the movie.

The next two page spread says to "use stickers for game pieces". I guess that means the stickers are re-usable on this paper. It's a "snakes and ladders" type thing using a coin for a dice (go ahead 1 or 2 squares). On the next page, count red and black spiders and add your own using stickers. Then place the stickers of Spider-Man poses to match the outlines on the page, and finally complete the picture by filling the blanks with the appropriate square stickers.

General Comments

This book is more expensive than any of the others, and features much less content. Sure, the pictures are full-color, and certainly the stickers are re-usable and there's plenty of them. But twelve pages? Six minutes later and the book is done. You've placed all the stickers. Then what? Peel 'em off and put 'em back down again? Yawn!

Overall Rating

Despite its shiny paper, extra size, abundant stickers and full-color photos, this is the weakest of all the activity books in this sequence. It heads off in a separate direction, and goes nowhere really. I can't offer more than a sub-standard two webs.