Books for Babies

I've recently been sent a few books geared more for babies and after having given them a ride with Bookworm2 (age 1 1/2) I thought I would share a little bit about a few of our favorites.

The first two come courtesy of Tiger Tales and are a part of their new fall line-up. (By the way, Tiger Tales recently redid their website and I have to say it is a remarkable improvement! It's easy to find titles you are looking for now, so if you want to check out all that they have to offer, take a peek!)

Hello, Animals! and Hello, Bugs! are "black and white sparkler" books. Written by Smriti Prasadam and illustrated by Emily Bolam, these two board books are full of simple but eye catching illustrations. As they are both a part of the "black and white sparkler" books you can guess at the colors that you'll find here. Yes, that's right! Primarily you'll see a lot of black and white which gives the books a very bold feel. However, each page also has a hint of color which, yes, you've guessed it again, sparkles.

For example, in Hello, Bugs! we open the book to find a page spread that contains a lady bug and a caterpillar. Both are white highlighted illustrations. The ladybug's back is red and the stripes on the caterpillar are green. The words on each page are simple, making this a quick read-aloud for the newest readers among us.

"Hello, Ladybug! scurry, scurry
Hello, Caterpillar! munch, munch"

Simple, bold and basic. The board books are sturdy and up to Tiger Tales solid standards for good reads. We recommend them to newbies.

Next up we have some titles from Roger Priddy. Now, we are long term Priddy fans around here. I credit the Roger Priddy Happy Baby series with a few huge accomplishments:

1. Teaching Bookworm1 the alphabet and basic vocabulary words; and
2. Teaching Bookworm2 basic vocabulary words.

We love the fact that Priddy books contain real photographs and not just cartoon drawings! This is so enormously helpful to both of my kids as they have begun to explore the world around them.

We have quite a collection of Priddy books in our house and we were happy to add these additional two titles, particularly because they appeal to the kinesthetic learner (which is Bookworm2!)

We have Priddy animal books but we hadn't seen Slide and Find - Animals. This book is fun as you have little sliders on each page to move around and reveal various animals. (Baby books are marketed rather clearly. "Slide and find" pretty much says it all!)

Each page spread in this book asks a different question from "Who am I?" to "Who's my baby?" Use the sliders to talk through the questions (or play hide-and-seek with the animals.) This is a cute and fun little book which Bookworm1 found to be very engaging.

Out of this particular stack of books though, we would have to say that Baby Touch and Feel Honk! Honk! is our favorite. You see, we've just discovered cars (and trains) and anything on wheels is a pretty big hit around these parts. Plus, did I mention the "touch and feel" part? Each page spread has something for the youngster to run their fingers over and explore.

If you want Bookworm2 to be really excited about a book, giving him something to touch and finger will make the read all the more interesting and this is a book he is content to sit down and spend some time with.

I, of course, love the Priddy photographs and 1-2 sentence descriptions of each vehicle for you to read and learn more about. This book is definitely a big hit around here and we heartily recommend it.

I appreciate the fact that publishers like Macmillan (home to Roger Priddy) and Tiger Tales are out to create books to engage and enlighten the youngest among us. It's fun to introduce children to the world of reading. I'm glad we have such books available to us to help make this possible.