Make this Your First Gruffalo

My niece reaches the grand age of 1 next week and I have the perfect present for her - a set of My First Gruffalo (Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler, Macmillan) books. Of course they won't actually be her first Gruffalo books at all as I gave her a lovely copy complete with buttons to press and sounds to hear at christmas. she may not be old enough yet to fully appreciate them but she does love hearing the story, seeing the pictures and even trying to turn the pages!

The four My First Gruffalo books are therefore perfect for they will help her to begin to learn her Colours, Numbers, Opposites and even Animal Actions as she grows. Better than this though becasue they are tough and chunky board books she can handle them herself without the worry of torn pages.

Each book features well-known and loved characters from the stories using each of them in an apprpriate way. For example in Colours the red fox is on his own but opposite a bright red page with the word RED and a few other red pictures from the story. GREEN appears opposite a nice tall tree from the forest and so on for the five colours featured.

In Opposites the BIG Gruffalo is opposite a small mouse. A happy mouse with his acorn faces a sad mouse without the acorn. In this book there are six Opposites for children to learn. Five numbers will find the reader counting the characters on each page with the words to learn to read too and animal actions will find children and their parents making some wonderful noises!

What is there not to enjoy about the Gruffalo and even more so now that there is a wonderful set of books with all our favourite charcters helping babies and toddlers to learn and take their very first steps into reading and understanding.

I know my niece and her parents will have great fun with this bright, colourful, durable and edcuational set of books, I hope you do too!

Interactive Book Fun!

This week has been great fun because I have been playing with novelty children’s books. Often I am asked why I have these books and what use they are – the answer is that I think it is very important for interactive books aimed at babies (and their parents) as well as toddlers are given reviews. Anyone with young children will know how difficult it is when entering any bookshop to decide between the sheer mass of books that have been created for this group of children, but being able to find out what even a small selection of them are like is very important.

This brings me to ‘Bouncy Books’. There are four books in this charming series, Jungle, Garden, Pets and Farm. Each book introduces children to four associated animals. Collect the series and children will have an understanding of 16 animals, they will learn what they are called and where they live, they will also get the opportunity to play with the books for the animals in these books bounce! It is great to be able to interact with a book, look at the pictures, play with them and have a learning experience at the same time. Fun, entertaining and educational these are a great set of books.

As well as this I have been testing my skills of dexterity with Splashy Sea and Busy Bugs, two books in the new ‘Lacing Card Books’ series. These books come with press out pieces that need lacing. They are certainly for the older toddler; perhaps those starting school needing to learn co-ordination skills. They are however great for any children (or adults) who want to practise their manual dexterity skills! Wonderfully vibrant pictures combined with interesting facts that have been written with the young reader’s education in mind combine to create another set of must-have fun books.

Revitalise your own and your child’s relationship with books by testing out some of these fun, lively and refreshingly different interactive, educational offerings.