Review: SuperQuesters – The Case of the Great Energy Robbery
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It’s been a while since we’ve had a new book review here on the blog, so we’re delighted to share the latest edition in the SuperQuesters STEM book series with you today. A while ago, reviewed SuperQuesters: the Case of the Golden Sun and loved it, so we were really excited to read SuperQuesters: The Case of the great Energy Robbery.
In case you’re not familiar with the term, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and SuperQuesters is designed to inspire a love for STEM learning in children through interactive stories. SuperQuesters: The Case of the Great Energy Robbery is the third instalment of the series, and sees us meet up again with friends Lilli, Leo and Bea. Leo’s mum, who is an engineer, has given them a model plane and they’re trying to work out how to make it fly (side note: great to see the role model of a mum as an engineer!) Leo’s mum explains to them about biofuel and renewable energy, and tells them they have a magic ingredient for making biofuel right there in the garden.
After searching around for a while in vain, the friends realise they don’t actually know what they are looking for, so they decide to go back to Questland, where they have travelled to before, in the hope of finding some clues about creating biofuel energy. For those who haven’t read any of the previous SuperQuester stories, the way to get to Questland is to hold hands, close your eyes, and think really REALLY hard!
Once in Questland, Lilli, Leo and Bea have to complete different challenges, and along the way they not only learn about how to produce energy from different natural resources such as the wind, sun, animal manure, ocean waves and more, they also help the Queen of Questland to defeat the evil Lord Grumble and his pesky Snapettes. Readers can help the friends complete their 8 different quests, by solving a variety of interactive puzzles, including using the stickers at the back of the book.
The book comes with two sets of stickers, so if you want to do the activities again, you can peel off the first set and start from scratch. We tested this out, and the stickers do come off again fairly easily. This is a brilliant addition to the book, as so often with these kinds of sticker activity books once you’ve done them, that’s it. Would also work really well for siblings sharing the book, who both want to have a go at the activities.
We were also pleased to see our feedback from reviewing the first book had been taken on board, and the sticker pages are now perforated, so can tear out the sticker page and have it next to you whilst doing the quests. That means you don’t have to flip backwards and forwards all the time, which was out only bugbear when reading the first book. Well done SuperQuesters for listening to your readers!
There’s a reward chart too at the front of the book, which summarises the STEM skills covered by each quest, and a glossary at the back of the book to give some more detailed information on some of the STEM terms.
Overall we enjoyed reading this book as much as the first one, and really had fun with it as well as learning some new information about renewable energy. The SuperQuesters series is aimed at age 4 – 8, my son only just turned 9 a few weeks ago – in fact he was still 8 when we received the book – so is at the top end of that age range, but he still really enjoyed it as he’s very interested in science. The SuperQuesters books would make great Christmas gifts or stocking fillers for any young readers interested in science.
SuperQuesters: The Case of the Stolen Sun (Book 1), SuperQuesters: The Case of the Missing Memory (Book 2), and SuperQuesters: the Case of the Great Energy Robbery (Book 3) are all available from Amazon (affiliate links) and other high street bookstores.
You can find out more about SuperQuesters on the QuestFriendz website including STEM quest activity sheets to download.
Disclosure: We were gifted a free copy of SuperQuesters: The Case of the Great Energy Robbery in return for an honest review. If you buy a copy of any of the books via the Amazon affiliate links in this post, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps to keep this blog running.
