Tickle, Tickle (Oxenbury Board Books)

Rating:
Summary: We love Helen Oxenbury!
Review: Her illustrations are so beautiful. The babies are simply adorable, and all the books in this series are fantastic. Simple phrases coupled with the colorful, down-to-earth pictures spark the imagination. I plan to search out more of her work right now!

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book for any age group
Review: I am not a child development expert, so I cannot give the technical reasons why my kids become so engrossed in these books. I can say this: both my daughters have loved all the books in this series (including "All Fall Down", "Say Goodnight" and "Clap Hands") since they were infants. It could be the soft oversized illustrations of babies engaged in familiar activities. It could be Helen Oxenbury's gentle rhymes. We were first introduced to Helen Oxenbury's books when the newspaper ran a list of "Must Have" books for different age groups. "Tickle Tickle" was recommended for infants and toddlers, but my oldest (almost four) still takes them out and stares at the pages. She has now memorized the words and "reads" them to her younger sister. I highly recommend all the books in the series, especially "Tickle Tickle"--a perennial favorite around our house.

Rating:
Summary: Big pictures for your child's short attention span!
Review: We checked this book out from the library. Three weeks later, when we had to return it, we turned around and bought our own copy.

Why? Well, our son LOVED this book. It surprised us, because the book only has 4 pictures in it. But that doesn't seem to matter to him. He asks us to read the "Tickle Book", as he calls it, over and over again. And he smiles and laughs all the way through it.

So what's in the book? Well, the first 2-page picture has 3 toddlers playing in the mud. Each child is doing something different, so there is a lot to look at on the page. The next 2-page picture shows the toddlers having a bath. At this point, our son starts chanting "bathie, bathie," and looks at us with eyes that say he wants to have a bathie too. The next 2-page picture shows the children getting their hair brushed (except for the one child with no hair). Since this is another activity our son enjoys, he laughs at this too. The final 2-page spread shows the toddlers getting tickled. At this point, it is a good idea to tickle your son/daughter. I know our son certainly enjoys it!

This book has some nice features. Each of the three children are of a different race, so your child gets exposed to racial diversity. Also, the book is oversized, which makes the large pictures that much more cinematic, kind of like a wide-screen movie, only in book form. And finally, the images in this book are simple, yet playful. What I mean by this is that there isn't a lot of detail per page, but the detail you do see is interesting enough to pull your child right into the book.

In short, we highly recommend this book because it seems to be able to keep our son's attention for long periods of time. And hey, if a book can keep a toddler's attention for more than five minutes, there has to be something special about it, doesn't there?