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?

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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: Mommy Hugs

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Title: Mommy Hugs

Author: Anne Gutman

Illustrator: Georg Hallensleben
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Year: 2003
ISBN: 978-0811839167
Format: Board Book
Pages: 14
Age Range: Baby, Toddler
Kid Love Factor: 3/5
Adult Sanity Factor: 3/5

Mommy Hugs shows various animal babies and how their mothers hug them on each spread of pages.

Mommy cat hugs her kitten with a nuzzle.

There are cats, elephants, monkeys, polar bears, swans, and parrots. It ends with the human narrator explaining how his/her mother hugs him/her.

Not only does this book give you the opportunity to snuggle with your child in a variety of ways, it’s also teaching that animals (at least some of them) also care for their families, and even functions as a vocabulary expander between the animal baby names (swans have cygnets, in case you’ve forgotten from elementary school) and the near-synonyms for hug.

Mommy Hugs is one of those books we read repeatedly for three days in a row before Boo forgets about it for months. I’m not sure if this is a function of his waxing and waning enjoyment of it, or simply because it’s a small book that tends to get lost behind his multitude of others. Not that small is bad; A) it’s nice a portable, and B) it goes missing often enough I don’t get too sick of it.

For the more male parents out there, there’s also Daddy Cuddles by the same creators. As we haven’t read that one I can’t speak about it directly, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest it's pretty similar.

Autism Spectrum Bonus: This book gives lots of opportunity to indulge children who crave tactile sensory input. Luckily for us, for the most part Boo is a hugger/snuggler/crawls-all-over-mommy-and/or-daddy-er. For kids who are more averse to contact, it might be a way to try to explore various ‘hugs’ that might be less disliked than your average neurotypical’s standard offering. Perhaps a polar bear-like tickle would be better, or maybe a cat-like nuzzle or a monkey-like pat. Or something not mentioned in the book but that the book leads you to discover. We also found this book to be a great way to build anticipation in Boo’s early communication days. He soon learned that he’d get a tickle on the polar bear page and his grins and vocalizations as he waited for it were priceless.

Bottom Line:
Mommy readers hug their readlits around a book.
Links:

Mommy Hugs at Amazon.ca

Mommy Hugs at Amazon.com

Review: Too Big for Diapers

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Title: Too Big For Diapers
Author: Sesame Street
Photographer: John E. Barrett
Publisher: Random House
Year: 2000
ISBN: 978-0375810459
Format: Board Book
Pages: 12
Age Range: Toddler
Kid Love Factor: 3/5
Adult Sanity Factor: 2.5/5

We’re gearing up for Potty Training 2010 (or maybe 2011, we’ll see) in the Sam and Boo household. Thus we’ve begun collecting potty books to start gauging interest and comprehension in the concept. Boo’s not quite ready yet, often still defeated by the technical difficulty of pant removal and not particularly caring whether he’s wet and/or stinky. But he is starting to show much more interest in toilets, provided they’re not Evil Restaurant Toilets of Loud Whooshing Scaritude. 

As Boo, due to daycare, has already become indoctrinated exposed familiar with the Sesame Street characters, Ernie being Too Big for Diapers seemed an ideal starting point. The illustrations are photographed sets of Baby Muppets with Baby Muppet accoutrements. They’re clear and cute and lovable as only Baby Muppets can be.

As for the plot, it seems that only babies use diapers. As a Big Kid, Ernie receives a potty as a present. When he has to use the potty, he stops playing, goes to the bathroom, unsnaps his pants, sits on the potty, and ‘goes’. Once he’s done, he wipes himself, washes his hands, and returns to playing. I presume he also does his pants back up, or at least gets a Muppet parental unit to do so for him, though it's not actually mentioned.

Yay for Ernie!

The idea seems to be that familiar characters and very simple text will make the experience more comprehensible and less scary for the pre-trained toddler set. Boo enjoys the book; it’s not one of his favourites, but he does bring it over to me frequently enough that I know he doesn’t dislike it. I don’t dislike it either, but I question its usefulness in spots.  Plus side: at 12 pages, it's not long enough to drive me nuts, hence the reasonable Adult Sanity Factor even with the stilted text.

It does have two other things “going” for it: it mentions not using too much toilet paper and it also reminds Ernie to wash his hands.  Most other potty books I've read leave out both.

Autism Spectrum Bonus: Too Big for Diapers is probably a good potty book to introduce the potty in a cute and non-threatening way, especially if your kid-in-training has a Special Interest in Sesame Street or puppets. On the other hand, the text is vague at best. Ernie “goes”. He doesn’t pee, poop, tinkle, crap, urinate, defecate, or any other verb (I have a few other favourites I don't recommend saying intentionally in front of your toddler) that might offend parental sensibilities yet be meaningful to literal little toddler minds, especially literal little autistic toddler minds. However, by adding some appropriate words and clarifying the steps Ernie leaves out, I think the book can still be useful. 

Bottom Line:
Too Big for Diapers is a Big Kid book.  If you have a Big Kid, they could learn to go as Ernie does.  Way to go, Ernie! 

Huh.  It's physically painful for me to write in that style.  Almost worth lowering the ASF just for the trauma of having to mimic it, but I'll resist.

Links:

Too Big for Diapers at Amazon.ca

Too Big for Diapers at Amazon.com

Review: Rock-a-Bye Farm

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Title: Rock-a-Bye Farm

Author: Diane Johnston Hamm
Illustrator: Alexi Natchev (website)
Publisher: Little Simon
Year: 2008
ISBN: 978-1416939213
Format: Board Book
Pages: 32
Age Range: Baby, Toddler, Preschooler
Kid Love Factor: 3/5
Adult Sanity Factor: 3/5

Rock-a-Bye Farm starts off very normally with:

It’s bedtime.
The farmer rocks his baby.
When the baby goes to sleep...

Once the human baby goes to sleep, things get rapidly sillier:

The farmer rocks his dog.

And on the next page:

When the dog is snoring loudly...

Once the dog is asleep, he rocks his hens.  Once the hens are asleep, he rocks his sheep.  Et cetera.  The brightly coloured illustrations get progressively more humorous along with the text.  The farmer uses an apron to rock the hens.  He presses a hay bale above his head to rock the sheep.  He uses a door balanced on a wooden barrel to rock his cow and a hammock to rock his horse.  Once everyone is finally asleep, the farmer rocks himself.  Good night!

We’ve been using Rock-a-Bye Farm to both reinforce Boo’s animal sounds and to teach the concepts of loud (highly successful) and quiet (not so much).  On one spread of pages, when the farmer is rocking the cow, we yell “MOO!!”  On the next spread, when the cow is asleep, we (and by ‘we’, I mean me) whisper “moo”.  Rinse and repeat for the other animals.  Let’s just say Boo’s starting to get it, but it’s a work in progress.

I don’t think this will ever become one of Boo’s favourite books, but he’s intrigued enough to want to read it about once a day right now.  And while it’s unlikely to become one of my favourites either, it’s not one I loath to see approaching.

Autism Spectrum Bonus: As I said, we’ve been using Rock-a-Bye Farm to reinforce animal imitation and loud/quiet voices.  Older kids (i.e. ones with a better grasp of basic physics than Boo) may enjoy the visual humour of the farmer having to use elaborate methods to rock his various animals to sleep.  For those with fairly rigid bedtime routines, Rock-a-Bye Farm could be a good addition to story time, if the 4087^th rendition of Goodnight Moon is starting to wear you down.

Links:

Rock-a-Bye Farm on Amazon.ca

Rock-a-Bye Farm on Amazon.com