Best Christmas present ever!

Finally they have done it!

In my opinion the best product this year also wins the prize for best Christmas present. Not that I tend to give out prizes for anything as I am not an accredited film-board or Father Christmas's personal auditor but for this I'm prepared to make an example.

To properly explain we have to go back a few years. In November 2001 Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone was released in cinemas. In December 2001 my 11 year old brother Richard first put on his Christmas list (amongst an endless list of Scooby Doo DVDs), "a Harry Potter wand". Over the course of the next few years we bought him toy wands and battling wands but none of these were what he wanted: none of these could do real magic.

As Richard got older his Christmas list changed little: this is because Richard has Down Syndrome so his love of Harry Potter was going nowhere! He did however add "magic powder" to his lists in the hope that it would make his wand work like Harry Potter's. But still there was no way that Richard, now 22, could cast lumos, expelliarmus  or stupefy like the wizard he wishes he was.

Until now.

At first I dismissed Wonderbook: Book of Spells as just another spin off from J.K. Rowlings ever hungry merchandise department, a shallow attempt to shoehorn the story into another medium. However, that was before I actually saw it in action. It, and I can't say this emphatically enough, is marvellous.

Richard can now watch the book come to life on his tv screen while casting magic spells from the move controller which transforms on-screen to his choice of wand. The camera can tell when he turns the pages and, on-screen, the pages change too, showing new mini stories, history of spells and practise pages all of which are accessed by pulling the content from the page by wand. Everything is based on simple actions and learning by repetition so Richard can follow the instructions fairly easily or practise until he gets it: the content is really accessible but with a good level of difficulty to maintain interest. It also has a lot of new content, both history and stories that add a realistically Hogwarts feel to the game.

When I finally peeled myself away from his side, Richard had completed chapter one and the spell test associated with it. Four more chapters await him, each of which last 12 double pages of the Wonderbook. I hope that it lives up to my initial excitement: it may only be an animated storybook but if it makes Richard feel like a wizard then it truly is magic to me.