Wow, It's a Cow!

We had a lot of fun with Wow, It's A Cow! in the 18-months to 2-years range. It's a cute little book, but I wouldn't advise anyone to rush out and buy it. There's nothing particularly special about it. This is just a fun little romp that's easily interchangeable with a bunch of other, similar books.

Still, Charlie really enjoyed this one for several months. It seemed to have a lot of staying power for him. The story is about a farmer looking for his cow. He comes across lots of animals, but they are not the cow. Finally, on the last page, he finds the cow in the barn.

The amusement factor in the book is that on each page, the cow is drawn doing what some other animal does, and then you lift the flap and it shows the actual animal underneath. So the cow gets to pull a plow (horse), swim in the pond (duck), and perch on a tree branch (bird), among other things. Charlie always liked to lift the flap and announce the animal that was actually doing those things.

The book is also written in rhyme. "If it goes 'Neigh, neigh,' / And it's pulling a plow, / It's not a cow! / Of course, / It's a . . . horse!" These are relatively cute but uninteresting from an adult's perspective (except that I always wanted to rhyme a certain swear word with "duck" ...). The illustrations, too, are cute but nothing special.

It's a cute book for learning about animals, their sounds, and their jobs or characteristics. It's also fun as a lift-the-flap book and general entertainment. But it's not great literature.

Life-Size Aquarium and More Life-Size Zoo

This is just a brief update. In my post about Life-Size Zoo a few days ago, I mentioned the two sequels I had just discovered, More Life-Size Zoo and Life-Size Aquarium. These arrived from Amazon, and I want to report that: (1) these are just as awesome as the original, but (2) I would recommend them for a somewhat older age group.

Charlie loves the original Life-Size Zoo at under two and a half years old. Life-Size Aquarium scared him, and he ran away crying after seeing a few pages. Sea creatures just look weird, even the friendly ones like dolphins. More Life-Size Zoo isn't scary, but the fold-out pages are more extensive and I'm worried about the book getting damaged until he's able to handle it a bit more carefully. So these will go back on the shelf for at least six months, and probably more.

Nonetheless, the pictures are just as exciting as the original. I enjoyed looking through them myself, and I would certainly recommend these for 3- or 4-year olds.

Life-Size Zoo

Ever wondered exactly how big a koala is? Sure, you can go and see one at the zoo, but it's likely to be pretty far away and might be hiding or sleeping when you're there. For an up-close look, check out Life-Size Zoo: From Tiny Rodents to Gigantic Elephants, An Actual Size Animal Encyclopedia.

This book is a show-stopper. When they say life-size, they are not kidding. The book itself is gigantic, more than 14 inches by 10 inches, which is larger than any other book we own, including the large I Spy books you may be familiar with (post on that series forthcoming). Each page shows a photograph of a single animal in actual life size. Some are small enough to fit on a single two-page spread, like the aforementioned koala. Others feature just the head (panda, tiger). Still others have a full four-page foldout to showcase just the head (giraffe with her tongue sticking out).

The detail you can see in photographs this big is stunning. You can see gradations of color in a gorilla's fur, tiny spots on an aardvark's face, and the wrinkles around an elephant's eye. Detail-lovers will enjoy this book more than most.

The book includes a few facts about each species that is featured, and about the individual animal that is photographed. Our giraffe, for example, is a 6-year-old female named Lulu. The scientific name is listed, a few features of the photograph are pointed out in sidebar text, and some fun facts are listed as well ("Giraffes can gallop up to 35 miles an hour."). But the focus of this book is clearly on the pictures, not the textual information.

My only gripe about this book is the limited number of animals featured. There are only twenty. I wish they'd added a few more pages. Instead, they've gone the sequel route: I've just discovered More Life-Size Zoo: An All-New Actual-Size Animal Encyclopedia and Life-Size Aquarium on Amazon, and I'm ordering them right now!

We Are What We Eat!

In this lovely and engaging book, We Are What We Eat!, the children build a food sculpture in the shape of a person, using a selection of fruits and vegetables. The Amazon product description claims it's a board book, but it's actually not. It's a hardcover with cardstock pages, each of which folds out. When you turn to a page, you see one of the fruits or vegetables in its whole form. Fold out the page to reveal the insides cut into various interesting shapes! Things like pits, seeds, and peels are labeled.

This book has been a staple in our household for over a year. Charlie likes to announce the various foods as they appear, and marvels over the differences between the insides and outsides. This is the first book where he ever pretended to grab the foods off the page and eat them, something he now does whenever a food appears in any book, anywhere.

This is a great one. The photographs are creative and engaging, the fold-out pages are used effectively to make the outside/inside distinction, and there's a positive health message because of all the fruits and vegetables. Definitely a winner.