Go Hare and Tortoise Go! ¦ Run Little Chicken Run!

Books that are full of movement and dynamic energy are greatly enjoyed by infants and preschoolers. So the creation of books with this notion at their heart sounds like a winning concept. Go Hare and Tortoise Go! and Run Little Chicken Run! are based on the traditional stories of ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’ and ‘Chicken Licken’. They are labelled as ‘finger-trail’ books. The young reader moves their finger along a groove across each double page spread in a way that is related to the story. The theory here is that the more interaction possible with a book, the better the reader will enjoy it. Unfortunately this idea has meant that the illustrations have bent over backwards to accommodate the trail. Vagnozzi has produced simple illustrations in vibrant pastel colours but the lack of a three dimensional perspective causes problems for the finger trail additions, as movement can only be conveyed by lateral translations across the page. Of the two, Go Hare and Tortoise Go! is better crafted in terms of text, but suffers from too many words for the age range associated with board books. The end results are disappointing, mainly due to the ambitious nature of the ‘finger-trail’ novelty additions.