Merriam-Webster's Activity Mysteries: Follow The Stars! What Happened On Mars?

MERRIAM-WEBSTER'S ACTIVITY MYSTERIES is a really fantastic activity book, targeted for children in early elementary school. The book features a storyline with a word-related activity on each page. Merriam and Webster are best friends who love solving mysteries. They have been called to Mars for a mystery in space - Astronaut Scott on the international space station tells them that they have lost communication with a rover. Merriam and Webster are on the case! Each page includes a part of the rhyming story as well as a targeted activity, such as a word search, crossword, word scramble, word play, and more.

What I loved: First of all, in terms of the overarching story, it was quite clever and will keep children entertained as they flip through the book to find out what happened to the Mars rover. The story is told in rhyme, which is really fun to read and makes for a fun activity for caregivers to share with children. Every page in this book is in full color, and it feels like an upgraded activity book with thick pages and great, colorful illustrations.

For children who just want the story, it's plenty of fun with information and fun facts about the solar system and various planets along the way (fun facts are shown in bars at the bottom on key pages). The characters are cute and entertaining, with Merriam and Webster appearing throughout, but also joined by Astronaut Scott and even the constellation Andromeda who helps them out.

The activities are really fun and educational. They teach about rhyming words, verbs/action words, homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, onomatopoeias, contractions, and compound words amongst other things. This is a really delightful way to play with English and the games are really fun - including some spaces for creativity with a comic they can create the words for plus open-ended word creation. There are activities that test spelling, create games with changing letters to make new words, mazes of rhyming words, and traditional word games such as word scrambles, word searches, and crosswords. These are made slightly easier with illustrated hints on the scrambles and word/letter banks for crosswords and fill in the blanks. This works well for early elementary school aged children, providing plenty of educational fun.

The backmatter includes answer keys and stickers to add to the fun.

Final verdict: Educational with plenty of word games and a great rhyming story, this is a delightful and engaging activity book that is sure to enchant early elementary aged readers. Highly recommend checking this out!