Review: The Cheerios Play Book

I hope nobody else has caught the fun new cold/flu that's been going around in these parts.  We're on day 5 of coughing/snotting/laryngitis baby, which hasn't been fun for anyone.  Especially since Boo's lack of vocal chord cooperation has dropped my understanding of him from 70% of the time to about 30%.  Frustration all 'round, anyone?

Find at Amazon.com
Find at Amazon.ca

Title: The Cheerios Play Book

Author/Illustrator: Lee Wade
Publisher: Little Simon

Year: 1998
ISBN: 978-1862910959
Format: Board Book
Pages: 14
Age Range: Baby, Toddler
Kid Love Factor: 3/5
Adult Sanity Factor: 2/5

The Cheerios Play Book is a bit different than most books we've reviewed.  For one, it's a glorified ad campaign.   I'm not the fondest of books that exist merely to sell a product and this one is more blatant than most.  And two, it's not exactly a book that's going to get kids riveted on reading; there's not much of a story, per se.

That being said, what it is good for is practicing manual dexterity, counting, and imagination.  Each layout in the book has an illustration and with photographic Cheerios taking the place of round objects like tires, buttons, glasses, or bubbles.  There are also holes where tots can place real Cheerios (or Nutrios, or generic O cereal; shh, don't tell General Mills) to finish the pictures.

Boo's a bit of a fan.  He doesn't pull the book out very often, but when he does stumble across it, he's instantly in the kitchen where he rifles through the cabinet until he finds the current box of pseudo-Cheerios to lug back with him.  He'll happily dig into the box, pull out a handful, place the Cheerios in the holes, eat them, and move onto the next page.  Woe betides my kitchen and living room floors if I'm not paying attention when all this occurs.  Boo is all the proof physicists need to support chaos theory.

Autism Spectrum Bonus: Apart from a brief period in early neurotypical toddlerhood, this book seems to be entirely Autism Spectrum Bonus.  Assuming your child likes Cheerios or another small roundish food that will fit in the holes, the book is well suited to working on fine motor skills like pincher grasping and object placement.  It's also good for practicing having you child follow a proximal point as you initially direct them to the Cheerios and the holes for them.  Boo's been making progress in recognizing that small shapes, in this case circles, can make up parts of a larger whole.  We're also using it to help introduce counting to Boo; he can already recite an impressive length of numbers (with a few logical errors like twenty-ten following twenty-nine) and can identify the first 25 or so by symbol before he starts getting confused, but he's still not quite making the link that OOOO is four objects, though he can now reliably recognize O, OO, and OOO as one, two, and three, respectively.

We just use the book casually when Boo shows interest, but I can see it being useful in more formalized therapies as well.

Bottom Line:
It's an ad, but if you can overlook that, it's a useful one.

Links:

The Cheerios Play Book (Canada)

The Cheerios Play Book (USA)

Review: Flaptastic Sizes

Find at Amazon.com
Find at Amazon.ca

Title: Flaptastic Sizes
Author/Illustrator: See publisher
Publisher: Dorling Kindersley Publishing
Year: 2009
ISBN: 978-0756654511
Format: Board book
Pages: 12
Age Range: Baby, Toddler
Kid Love Factor: 3.5/5
Adult Sanity Factor: 2/5

Flaptastic Sizes is a lift-the-flap book that teaches, well, sizes.  Surprise!  Didn't see that coming, did you?

Each page spread has a picture and a size descriptor, and then the flap can be lifted and an opposing descriptor and picture is seen.  Kids learn that daisies are short while sunflowers are tall, elephants are big while chicks are small,, paint brushes can be wide or narrow, and acorns are tiny while trees are enormous.  Lots of fun vocabulary-stretching words to be had here.  It’s awesome having your toddler describe something as “Eeee-no-muss”.

My one real peeve is the set of Russian dolls at the end. They’re lovely, of course, as Russian dolls tend to be.  The problem is that there are seven of them and they’re labelled Biggest, Bigger, Big, Middle, Small, Smaller, Tiny.  Seriously?  Tiny? They couldn’t finish that off symmetrically with ‘smallest’ instead of ‘tiny’?  And shouldn't middle be medium? Gah!

My nearly compulsive desire for linguistic order aside, Boo was fond of the book, though he seems to be outgrowing it now.  He especially loves the flowers; we were often treated to top-of-his-lungs exclamations of “Sunflower!”  and eventually, once we’d read Lemons Are Not Red,  “Sunflower is not short! Sunflower is tall. Daisies are short!”   

My other peeve is that the acorn described as tiny is in fact pictured at approximately 200% of an actual acorn's size, but I find that quite bearable compared to the issue with the dolls.  Yes, sometimes my quibbles are ridiculous even to myself...

Autism Spectrum Bonus: As with neurotypical children, Flaptastic Sizes might help to get the concept of quantifier adjectives across.  The lift-the-flap design may encourage kids who are usually less than eager to participate to follow their curiosity and check out what’s underneath.  For very young kids or those with fine motor skill delays, the multiple directions in which the pages open may provide an interesting challenge.

Bottom Line:

Good and Bad.

Links:

Flaptastic Sizes at Amazon.ca

Flaptastic Sizes at Amazon.com

Review: Goodnight Faces: A Book of Masks

Find at Amazon.ca
Find at Amazon.com

Title: Goodnight Faces: A Book of Masks

Author: Lucy Schultz

Illustrator: Ana Larranaga

Publisher: Innovative Kids

Year: 2007

ISBN: 978-1584766728

Format: Board Book

Pages: 12

Age Range: Baby, Toddler

Kid Love Factor: 3.5/5
Adult Sanity Factor: 2/5

Goodnight Faces: A Book of Masks is designed to stimulate interaction between an adult and a young child. When the book is opened, there are two holes for the adult's eyes to peep through, and as the pages turn an assortment of ‘masks’ transform the adult into the characters inside, allowing for bedtime games of peekaboo.

“The man in the moon in the sky so deep says, "Now it's time to go to sleep."

Each two-page spread features a single rhyming line and an illustrated character (the moon, a bird, a mouse, a puppy, a teddy bear, and a house) going to sleep. The illustrations are simple, designed more to emphasize the eyes that will be looking through them than telling a story on their own. With the proper amount of vocal (and ocular) animation, you should be able to get your baby or toddler giggling up a storm in no time. The 'story' is short enough that it's a quick trick to memorize it and be able to play along without having to actively read, a necessity as you'll spend most of your time looking through the back of the book. As children get older, they'll likely start trying to 'read' it to you, holding it to their own faces and pretending to be the characters themselves. Which is great, because you’ll be more than tired of reciting it yourself.

Autism Spectrum Bonus: Because of the mask concept, this book may encourage eye contact or pseudo-eye contact in kids who find it stressful while minimizing distracting information from the rest of the face.  It's also great for introducing or emphasizing the concept of pretending to be something else.

Bottom Line: The mommy with the book in front of her nose wishes she had more interesting prose.

Links:

Goodnight Faces on Amazon.ca

Goodnight Faces on Amazon.com