BOOK REVIEW: The Slime Book – All You Need to Know to Make the Perfect Slime by Dorling Kindersley

Stephanie O'Connell | 1 December 2017 | 1 Reply

BOOK REVIEW: The Slime Book – All You Need to Know to Make the Perfect Slime by Dorling Kindersley

Dorling Kindersley
November 2017
Paperback, $14.99
Reviewed by Steph O’Connell

Activities / Children’s Science

9/10

Over 30 gloopy, gooey, colourful diy slime recipes will mesmerise youngsters by showing them how to make slime.

Play, poke, push, pull, and pop awesome easy-to-follow slime recipes, all of which use inexpensive, accessible, and safe everyday products. Create Monster Slime with googly eyes, prepare for an eruption with Volcanic Slime, tuck in to some yummy edible chocolate slime and see the rainbow with unicorn slime!

All projects in The Slime Book are shown with clear step-by-step images and a vibrant final image of the slimy stuff. Learn the science behind these slime creations with amazing fact boxes and carry on the fun with recipe variations. The latest addictive kids’ activity, making your own slime is the ultimate sticky and squidgy fun – are you ready to create slime?

Then get goo-ing!

Anyone who’s ever worked with children is bound to know the good old cornflour recipe which produces a kind of slime (or goop, or goo) that reacts to pressure by transforming from a liquid to a solid when handled abrasively, and quickly becomes liquid again as soon as the external force is removed.

But this cornflour goop (included in The Slime Book), while easy to make from an ingredient you might have at home, has its serious limitations. It’s great for looking at textures and reactions, but will leave a residue and is best used in controlled environments.

Fortunately, The Slime Book is here to offer oodles of other recipes fast and simple enough that kids can be involved in the creation process, and the slime produced is bound to offer fun for hours after creation.

Most of these recipes require a few of the same basic ingredients, so once you’ve got those (and a few bits and pieces to change it up) you can get a pretty good idea of which putty will be best for which situations.

It should be noted that, while the cover boasts “More than 30 amazing recipes”, there are only thirty-three if you include the five “variation” options which include things like adding gold glitter to the gold slime, number confetti instead of the star confetti the main instructions list, adding some colouring to the base of the “Snow Slime”, and so on.

There are also only twelve completely original recipes, with the rest largely being different suggestions of colours and things you can include in one of the eight non-edible bases (such as dinosaurs, play sand, Styrofoam balls, etc.).

But twelve recipes are probably enough to keep you in slime for a good long while, especially as they ingredients are bound to harden and/or get dirty after a while and need replacing, and it’s fun to try different colours and other inclusions. The listing of recipes with the same base but inclusions of things like different glitter, confetti, paint, colouring, or toys (dinosaurs, pompoms, etc.) will be great for kids to have a look through and explore their options. Likewise, the re-use of the fluffy slime recipe to create “Unicorn Slime” simply by making them in a range of pastel colours is bound to be a hit.

And, to be honest, the second recipe in the book really does make the perfect slime. It has a great texture and won’t stick to carpet or clothing, it stretches (both long like a string and flat like a film/bubble), you can blow air into it with a straw and make it expand like a bubble, you can “snap” it if you apply fast pressure, you can roll it into a ball and bounce it, you can mould it. About the only thing you can’t do with it is eat it, but you wouldn’t want to, anyway, because then you would no longer be able to play with it!

As a thirty-year-old child at heart, I had a lot of fun with this book, and the resultant goo, and will definitely be sharing them with the kids I work with.

My personal favourites are the aptly-named “Stretchy Slime”, the “See-Through Slime” but with a little food colouring added (this is most reminiscent in texture to the Gak slime that I grew up playing with), and the bubbly, gooey “Swamp Slime”.

This is a great book for use over the holidays, when all children in your household (“grown-up” or not) will have plenty of time to experiment with the gooey mixtures!