Baby Preschool Books

My daughter LOVES these books and always gravitates towards them. They are fun to read and very interactive. I just bought several sets as gifts for new parents!!

My 9-month-old loves these books! The flaps make them interactive and the illustrations are very colorful. Also, there are a variety of nationalities included. I highly recommend them (but be sure to supervise since it would be easy to bend or tear the flaps).

These are my 11 month old son's favorite books. He loves to participate by opening the flaps to see what is hidden behind them.

These books are amazing! Our six month old is fascinated by the flaps on the books. They have stood up so far to lots of tugging, pulling, and gumming. Highly recommended!

My daughter loves Karen Katz books and will bring the whole box over to us to read many times a day. Some of the flaps are tearing off, but that's because she carries them around by the flaps sometimes. She loves the colors and the babies!

As an early childhood professional, I am always looking for new books to share with children, their parents & teachers. When I saw this one reviewed in the National Association for the Education of Young Children's magazine, I immediately ordered several copies. I have already used them for teacher training & as baby shower, welcome-to-world new baby & now-you-are-grandparents gifts.

The book includes all of the elements of appropriate books for young children. The story/text is simple and incorporates rhyme, repetition & interesting vocabulary. The illustrations are soft yet colorful & clear, subtly addressing similarities & differences.

The book provides opportunities to initiate discussions about numbers by counting the fingers, toes & babies. It also addresses social/emotional aspects of development by illustrating empathy & caring interpreted through the faces & actions of the characters.

I have yet to see anyone look at this book & not melt into the long "awe" we often hear when looking at something that truly touches our hearts.

This is one of the sweetest books I have ever read. It is a perfect bedtime story. It would also make a special baby shower gift.

Mem Fox has done it again!! I can't wait to share this story with my 1 year old daughter so please publish it in a board book edition! I love the message that we're all so alike as babies despite where we live or what color our skin is. It is so relevant to babies as I am always kissing my babies toes and fingers. Helen Oxenbury has produced beautiful illustrations that are pivotal to the language! Can't wait for the board book!!!

My son is 3 years old and he just recently started to show interest in tracing. So, I started him out with Kumon maze book and this book. He absolutely loves it!! The pages in the book are easy to understand and very simple. Simple enough for a child of the indicated age on the front cover of the book. The quality of the paper is very sturdy, it doesn't rip easily and you can erase over and over, there would be no wear and tear on the sheets. The colors of the pages are not super bright (like alot of books I've used before) but nice light colors that are gentle and not overwhelming to the eyes. The only thing that I don't like about the book is that they can't tear out and as you get further into the book, it gets a bit annoying to have to hold the previous pages down. But, over all it's an excellent book and I would continue to use and purchase their products.

I thought it would be actual tracing, but it was basically just drawing a line from point A to point B, kind of like a maze that's super-easy. My daughter is turning 4 in a month and is not excited about the book. It was fun for a night, but now it just sits there.

This book has a very fun way to practice cutting, my daughter just love it because there are some projects that she can do by herself and then she decors her room with them. Very good book.

I guess I waited to long to get these books. My son who just turned four found this one rather easy but he enjoyed it very much. He finished over half of it in one day. He kept asking for more! He is doing the cutting book now and is doing well at it. He really likes all the pictures. The cutting and pasting book is a lot of fun as well. The only thing I would like is if they made these books "wipeable" so I don't have to toss them after they are used. I'm thinking of putting laminating sheets over them and using washable markers.

I have a preschooler with fine motor delays and he HATES to do anything which requires use of his hands. I was told by his teachers that this will lead to issues in school when he is expected to write and participate in art projects. If he can't write, it will affect his academic future.

Therapy provided only so much help, as he was frustrated with the tasks. But then I learned about Kumon's excellent reputation for learning through their local tutoring center - I purchased all of the workbooks.

My child just LOVED this book, and he dislikes anything to do with writing. He loved the book simply because of the cute pictures. He asked what they meant, what was he supposed to do, and why? I would say that we were going to draw lines to "help the bunny get to the other side" etc. I'd make up little stories about each character and pretty soon, he was doing the tasks without any hesitation at all!

I kept it to 3 pages a day or less. At first one might wonder, so what, straight horizontal/vertical lines? But his teachers said a child can't write his letters until he can draw straight and curved lines. Makes sense!

If you want to help your child develop fine motor skills while keeping them happy - this is the book for THEM!

My kids (ages 3 and 5) love listening to this CD and the pictures in the book are really well done. We use this book, Flip Flop French: Ages 3-5: Level 1 (Book + CD)and a few others to help them learn French and it's working.

My grand-daughter really likes to listen to the CD and has begun to sing along. I think that's great. Book illustrations are fun, too.

My daughter is still an infant so we haven't used the book yet. The c.d. is great. Fun to listen to while playing.

I received my item within less than a week from ordering, and in perfect condition. I appreciate this excellent customerservice.

This book is primarily about rhyming, not necessarily about French language. I am surprised to see people discussing it as a way of learning to "speak" French -- as in, saying something useful or meaningful. The book's cover makes that claim, too. Shoppers should be wary of expecting too much from this book as an instructional tool.

This is an attractive, fun package. If you go through it you might pick up a smattering of French words, a few numbers and so on. But it is not organized with any kind of instructional strategy, and the contents are rather inconsistent.

What it mostly does is to lead you through a lot rhymes with cute or interesting sounds. Sure, some pages contain poems in genuine French. But many of the rhymes include nonsense words (as the authors admit) which do not mean anything in any language (like "Bourre et bourre et ratatam").

The book claims that many of these rhymes are used by French kids for picking sides in playground games, or the like. If so, that means that a lot of these pieces are the equivalent of "one potato, two potato" or "Eeny meeny miney moe" on an American playground. I can't imagine teaching the phrase "eeny meeny miney moe" to a French child as a first introduction to English.

One of the rhymes, according to the guide in the back of the book, supposedly teaches the pronunciation of the "U" sound in French. The only "teaching" involved is the child listening to the CD. If you want the child to be able to speak those words, you may have to teach them how to form the French U sound. The book doesn't do it.

Another poem playfully replaces "sept oies" with "c'est toi." Due to the use of liasons in spoken French, those phrases are homonyms. The whole rhyme builds up to that double-entendre, which is based on a uniquely French bit of phonics. So if the book were really trying to teach French, this would be a perfect opportunity to do so. But it doesn't even mention it, so non-French speakers will miss out on the pun entirely.

In another case, the authors claim that a rhyme supposedly demonstrates different ways of using the "R" sound in French. It does nothing of the kind. Over and over, I felt like the authors were attempting to claim more educational value for the material than it really has, while failing to use teaching opportunities that *were* available.

What value the material DOES have is that it is mostly fun, catchy little rhymes that kids will relate to, especially with the help of the cute illustrations in the book. I believe that the CD by itself would not be very successful at all, unlike some other products. And for parents who do not speak French, or have a French dictionary nearby, good luck. Some -- but not all -- of the material is translated into English in the back.

The accents sound authentic, and the recordings introduce each rhyme with a slow rendition first, then move up to "normal" speed, and repeat it yet another time. I think this is a good approach. The recordings mix an adult voice and some kids -- some other reviews mistakenly say it's all kids.

The child I'm using this with had already learned a few fundamentals in reading and speaking French, and that background definitely helped. So, as other reviewers have suggested, this book may ironically actually be more useful as something other than a "first" book, contrary to the suggestion of its title.

So: Fun, yes, but your child will still need to learn a lot more "real" French somewhere else.

My Big Truck Book (Priddy Bicknell Big Ideas for Little People)

Great book for little boys who love trucks. Sturdy, good pictures and they learn all different names

My toddler loves this book, but I'm not sure how age-appropriate it is. I hadn't even heard of the names they call some of the trucks. They include just about everything! Great picture book, though!

These books are a great deal for hours of fun! My little guys looks at the pictures over and over and doesn't ever seem to get tired of hearing the names of all the pictures. These books have been great for his vocabulary as he tries to say all the words too!

My 18 month old and his 12 month old cousin both love this book. We are pleased at the number and variety of vehicles inside! The pictures are beautiful and clear and give us a lot to look at and talk about. We also bought My Big Animal Book and love it, too.

From the time my son first learned to talk, he has shown a fierce curiosity about what things are called, especially the things he sees when we are driving around. I was so pleased with Priddy's My Big Animal Book (Priddy Bicknell Big Ideas for Little People) that I picked up My Big Truck Book to help him identify various vehicles as well as to build his growing vocabulary. The book was a tremendous success on both levels.

The book features large, sturdy pages that catalog a variety of farm, construction, rescue, and other vehicles. The photos are large and colorful, and never fail to capture my son's attention. Between this book and My Big Animal Book, my son's vocabulary and understanding of the world around him increased by leaps and bounds. I still remember the first time we drove by a construction site and I heard him shouting "Backhoe! Mini excavator! Dump truck!" The book also allowed us to use his curiosity about vehicles and fascination with the pictures to teach him about the vehicles' functions, colors, and sizes.

My son is two years old now and more interested in storybooks, plus he knows the vehicles in this book front to back. That doesn't keep him from taking this book off the shelf time after time just to enjoy seeing his favorite trucks, tractor, and construction equipment.

I highly recommend this durable, colorful, and inexpensive book to all parents of curious toddlers. As teaching aids go, My Big Truck Book has proven far more effective than many a high-priced electronic gadget or DVD.

This is quite a good book in that it gets the child to identify with the character, Michael, and the steps Michael takes to become potty trained. I really like the idea that Michael isn't successful his first time and has to practice on the potty--exactly what my 2.5 year old needs! This is much better than the Ernie Goes Potty book, which is too short and simplistic. My son likes it in combination with the "Everybody Poops" book.

This wasn't exactly what I expected. The chairs (I bought two, for twin boys) are just too small. They won't be able to use them very long. The overall construction is great but the size isn't. If your child is small for his/her age it's perfect.

My stubborn 3 year old loves this book and is really understanding the message. We read it every time we have "potty time".

We read this book at night and now he loves to sit on the potty.

I was one of those Moms who felt as though her child would never be potty trained! My 3-and-a-half year-old son just did not seem inclined to do it. We offered gifts and party incentives...nothing doing! He did like to pee in the "big potty" from time to time but that was about it. I even bought him a potty of his own. Every day I said, "Hey...let's try to poop on the potty today" and every day he replied, "Tomorrow, Mommy." I also bought the WordWorld Bucket Set - House made my Mega Blocks that I knew he would LOVE. I made sure he saw it and let him know he would only get it when he went on the potty. Even THAT did not entice him!

I don't agree with pushing kids into doing something they don't seem ready for...and I definitely did not want to embarrass him about it. But he was the last kid in his pre-school to still wear diapers and one boy teased him about it once. It KILLED me! Still, I felt he would do it when he was ready.

But then I bought this book... He LOVED the book. He loved the pictures and the story about Michael. I made it very interactive with him. He asked me to start reading it 2-3 times a night. The weekend after we received the book, we took him to buy big boy underpants...just like Michael did in the book. He wanted to wear them...like Michael...and that was it! I sent him to pre-school with his underpants on (which I knew was a big risk) and he did not have an accident all day! And he went on the potty!! When he came home that day and told me he "pooped" on the potty, I was skeptical. That is...until he went into the bathroom at home, shut the door, and then proudly came out, grabbed my hand...and brought me over to the toilet to see the poopies. I jumped up and down as if I had just won the billion dollar lottery (and we also threw him a "Big Boy" party with ice cream cake as further reward)!

My son really related to Michael in the book...and I truly believed that it was what inspired him to use the potty. How could I NOT give this wonderful book five stars!!!

Of all the books I received as baby gifts, this book has had the longest lifespan. It was my daughter's favorite book as soon as she was old enough to turn regular pages, and almost a year later, it still is. Unlike shorter board books which become very repetitive, this book still has poems that seem "fresh" to me. Everytime we read it's a different experience, depending how many pages we turn at a time. It can be a short book or a long book, depending on the day. The illustrations are incredibly detailed. Even after what seems like a thousand reads, I'm finding clever twists and recognizing characters from elsewhere in the book. This book is a classic and offers lots of bang for your buck.

The illustrations for the rhymes are all of cats and other animals as stand in for humans and are very cute. As for the rhymes, there are not many of them and some are truncated.

When my kids were small, I went into a "Mother Goose" kick. I bought and checked out from the Library every Mother Goose I could find, we read them all, and THIS was by far our favorite. The selection of poems was varied, with old favorites and new poems I'd never heard from my childhood as well. The illustrations are beautiful and very fun, Rosemary Wells knows just how kids minds work!

This is a very good book, but it's not quite what I'd imagined. Most of the rhymes were not familiar to me. The illustrations are beautiful, though, and it's fun to read. We enjoy it, but if I had seen it before buying, I probably wouldn't have bought it.

This has been one of our kids' very favorite books since they were about 6 months old, edited by the clever Iona Opie and illustrated by the author of the Max and Ruby books. The sing-song rhythms enchanted them as babies, and the entertaining (and adorable) animal-based interpretations of the words have kept the kids coming back to pull this off the shelf. The collection is really well-chosen, with most of the "classic" nursery rhymes here; my only complaint is that the editor seems to opt for only one verse of most rhymes where in some cases I'm pretty sure there's more to it than that. The division into "chapters" makes it a little easier to find a closure point, since they keep wanting to hear/see "just one more!" A great baby gift.

Not sure why she is so interested in it, but she wants it read over and over again. She just loves it and I REALLY like that it holds up so well. She is 15 months old and recently is in a phase of tearing paper. So...this has held up well.

For a while my daughter (22 months at the time of this review) had no interest in Dr Seuss, but slowly she is warming up to it. This book's board book format that she can carry around works for her better in this case. She is still indifferent to a big hardcover collection that we have, probably because she is not allowed to handle it by herself. It's still not something that she brings me to read often, that's why she completely takes me by surprise by randomly quoting parts of it. Her favorite page is about quick feet and slow feet. Again, I expect this book to have a long lasting life in her library

The Foot Book: Dr. Seuss's Wacky Book of Opposites (Bright & Early Board Books(TM))

Fun and silly Dr. Seuss book that makes teaching fun

Whenever I work with kindergarten and first graders, this is one of the books I enjoy reading. They LOVE this book because of it's simplicity. It's great for encouraging kids to read and building self esteem. Thank you Dr. Seuss.

My granddaughter is only 20 months old and lives in Australia. I live in Philadelphia. I have actually seen her in person only 3 times since she was born. We "meet" on line about once a week with webcams ready. Although she speaks well, she's not quite ready for a full discussion. But, when she came to visit at 16 months, she really knew me instantly!

I had the idea that we could "read" together, so I ordered several Dr. Seuss books - 2 of each - from Amazon.com. She gets to choose the book, and I have my copy near at hand. We can not only read, but I can also point out the various pictures.

Last week, when reading "Hands Hands Fingers Thumb," I decided to bring out an African drum I have in the house. My daughter brought out one she had at her house, and my granddaughter and I played the drums together. "One thumb, one thumb, drumming on the drum. Dum ditty dum ditty dum dum dum." We were both laughing hard and had a great time. It was the first time I felt we were able to play together. Thanks, Amazon!

My son is 2 years old and he has 6 books from Boyton and he loves them all. I love them too, I really like the way Boynton plays with words and sounds in all of the books. Also, my son loves animals and all of the books illustrate animals in them. These books are fun and silly and my son loves me to read to him, he likes them so much that he has them memorized and sometimes reads to himself or to his little brother. Every time we are out in a restaurant or in public and my son starts to be impatient I pull out one of the books he gets entertained. The books are a good value and pretty much indestructible too.

My daughter has loved to have these books read to her since she was just over 1 year old. She now "reads" them to herself. She loves the rhymes and the animal sounds. Sandra Boynton is a favorite author in my home.

Big Box of Boynton: Barnyard Dance! Pajama Time! Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!This was a sensational success for my grand-daughter's first birthday. Fun books, heavy cardboard so as not to be destroyed by enthusastic reading.

These books are so cute! The Barnyard Dance has a really fun rhythm just like square dancing, and the DInosaurs one is about opposites. They are so cute. My 12 month old isn't super into the pictures, but I know it won't be long and he'll love the rhythmic sound of the story. the Barnyard Dance is a big hit among a few of my friend's kids.

My son did not show any interest in these books. Books are ok not very creative and rhyming as the "The going to bed book".

Bought this book for my grandson in Cincinnati and according to his dad, he loves it. He loves to go to the zoo and especially wants to see the Polar Bears, both before and after reading this book..........

I bought this book together with "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" a couple of days ago, and my 3y.o. kid loves them both. My son helps me read out loud and is learning complicated words like "boa constrictor". It's very simple and great for introducing new animals and new words (such as "roaring" or "hissing"), we have a lot of fun reading it together every day.

My 2 year old granddaughter loved "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", so I knew she would like "Polar Bear, Polar Bear" The artwork is simple but attractive. The messages are short but very appropriate. As a former teacher, I would love to have used this book with third graders as an example of the use of specific verbs. They would have loved it just as Caitlin and my 9-month old grandson does. A great little book that can be used for many years and at many depths.

My girls and I so enjoy reading the other book in the series, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?". My twin girls are 2 and they would actually sit with the other book and read it to out loud to each other, so it was a great find to have another book in the series for us to read, the illustrations are colorful and a great book to learn new vocabulary words.

This book is a great one to read to your kids.

I like this one more than his Panda Bear and Brown Bear because I can get the kids more excited about sounds. I've read it to groups of young kids and encourage them to make the sounds with me. I'll "roar" like a lion and "snort" like a hippo and the kids will parrot me. They have a lot of fun with this and you get them to start talking about sounds other animals make. They will remember the sounds after just the first reading and get excited any time they see me pick up the book.

It's really cute to watch one kid "read" this to another after we've read it in groups a few times. The kids will remember the animals and will sometimes ask "what do you hear?" and make the sounds for each animal as they go through. It's a wonderful feeling seeing them learn and remember.