Blue Square; Green Star; Red Triangle

A chunky board book with holes in is a nice thing. You want to feel it and poke your fingers in the holes. The colours here are fresh and bright, and the pictures of the little mouse wearing happy holiday sunglasses or driving a rickety rolling truck are enchanting. My quarrel with these books is the transparent educational thrust which is not well enough thought through. The idea is to familiarise young children with standard shapes: square, triangle and star. Each shape is punched through the pages, except for the back, which act as a coloured backdrop for the hole. The triangle is equilateral, with its base horizontal to the page. But we know that triangles can be isosceles, scalene, right angled, and in different orientations. The square is four-square, but we know that squares can be oriented any way. Why not offer a book with images of a range of triangles so that children can learn to discern and classify? Why not put shapes in different orientations? Why reduce young children's expereinces to a trivial minimum? There is no story line to link each page to the next, even though the mouse is sweet and the alliteration catchy. There is not enough interest to make them anyone's favourite.