Book Report: March 2011 - Board Book Edition, Take 2
I realized a good week or two after I posted my March reviews for board books that I had missed a few, so here they are:
Wild Animals by Rob Walker
Books that mess up the way this one does are half the reason why I bother to review board books. (See next review for the other half.) You would think that it would be close to impossible to create a bad board book, yes? I mean, how hard can it be? Put a picture of a tiger on one page, put the word “tiger” on the opposite page. Repeat with at least a half dozen other animals. And poof! fool proof board book.
Except for the part where you decide that you need to jazz stuff up and instead of using clear, cleanly printed text you write “tiger” with a funky font that looks rather like someone painted it with a brush. For some reason even that isn’t enough and you decide that there also needs to be a splash of color behind each animals name, effectively blending the text and the background by giving both the same artistic style and decreasing the contrast dramatically. Needless to say, this means that text is pretty much zero assistance in developing print awareness - not to mention hard for the adults to read.
This actually isn’t that difficult people. Sadly, you wouldn’t know that to look at some of the stuff that gets churned out.
Green Start: Baby Animals by Leslie Bockol
When I picked this book up, I wasn’t really expecting much. Most “gimmick” board books don’t really deliver much more than the gimmick, and this gimmick - recycled and earth friendly materials - was clearly meant for the adults and not the kids.
Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised that the language actually flowed rather well and managed to deliver some interesting information without being too complicated for toddlers to understand. (After dozens repetitions, of course, but that’s just how stuff works with toddlers.) The pictures were cute as well and the brown background was not so dark that there was not enough contrast for toddlers to be able to make out the pictures and words, which is what I had feared. Even the rough texture of the cover and pages makes for an interesting contrast to the glossy pages of most board books.
Overall I consider this book not just a decent buy, but a good demonstration of how trying to be more ethical often leads to interesting innovation.
Baby: Playtime by DK
I’d write a review for this book, but it would pretty much just be a repeat of review I did for another book in this series, so I will just point you there.
Wild Animals by Rob Walker
Books that mess up the way this one does are half the reason why I bother to review board books. (See next review for the other half.) You would think that it would be close to impossible to create a bad board book, yes? I mean, how hard can it be? Put a picture of a tiger on one page, put the word “tiger” on the opposite page. Repeat with at least a half dozen other animals. And poof! fool proof board book.
Except for the part where you decide that you need to jazz stuff up and instead of using clear, cleanly printed text you write “tiger” with a funky font that looks rather like someone painted it with a brush. For some reason even that isn’t enough and you decide that there also needs to be a splash of color behind each animals name, effectively blending the text and the background by giving both the same artistic style and decreasing the contrast dramatically. Needless to say, this means that text is pretty much zero assistance in developing print awareness - not to mention hard for the adults to read.
This actually isn’t that difficult people. Sadly, you wouldn’t know that to look at some of the stuff that gets churned out.
Green Start: Baby Animals by Leslie Bockol
When I picked this book up, I wasn’t really expecting much. Most “gimmick” board books don’t really deliver much more than the gimmick, and this gimmick - recycled and earth friendly materials - was clearly meant for the adults and not the kids.
Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised that the language actually flowed rather well and managed to deliver some interesting information without being too complicated for toddlers to understand. (After dozens repetitions, of course, but that’s just how stuff works with toddlers.) The pictures were cute as well and the brown background was not so dark that there was not enough contrast for toddlers to be able to make out the pictures and words, which is what I had feared. Even the rough texture of the cover and pages makes for an interesting contrast to the glossy pages of most board books.
Overall I consider this book not just a decent buy, but a good demonstration of how trying to be more ethical often leads to interesting innovation.
Baby: Playtime by DK
I’d write a review for this book, but it would pretty much just be a repeat of review I did for another book in this series, so I will just point you there.