Coming to Tea; Going Swimming; Going to Playschool; Doing the Garden

First published between 1985 and 1992 as picture books for nursery/reception children, this familiar series about a mum and her two pre-school children doing various everyday things is now reissued in board-book form.

A simple speech-based phrase or sentence to each page (and the odd speech-bubble remark from the baby) adds to what can be gleaned from the nicely detailed pictures; the illustrations are cartoony in style and depict a chaotic but nurturing middle-class household, complete with Aga, Morris Traveller and mildly harassed mother. I find them attractive and quirky - though Garland sometimes misses the mark with clumsy depiction of faces or stance, or inconsistency in the age of the children. The new cover illustration for Going Swimming is particularly unfortunate, making Mum look gawky and unlike herself; some of the faces in other volumes verge on the ugly. Loss of the original endpapers, in which the story is introduced and concluded without words, is sad in these otherwise faithfully reproduced board books. On the plus side, 'it's nice to see a pregnant mum' remarked one of my testers. In addition, though they are not explicitly about a single parent, there is no hint of a dad in any of the books, a feature which can be useful, and is fairly unusual in books of this type. There is some ethnic mix especially in Going to Playschool.

Who are they for? My 18-month-old has loved her introduction to these books, which I would not otherwise have thought of offering her for a year or so. She has enjoyed the wealth of things to look at and babble about, and they have been returned to over and over again. However, the text, the story and visual jokes and allusions are lost on her - and on anyone of board-book age. In addition the topics, though part of her experience, are sophisticated beyond her comprehension here. Playgroups might find the board edition's durability helpful but otherwise they offer less rather than more than the originals, which still have a place in discussion in nursery or in early reading with older children. Another case of publishers trying to overextend the market perhaps?