Lucy goes to playgroup ¦ Lucy helps in the garden ¦ Sam's visit to the zoo ¦ Sam goes shopping ¦ Ben's birthday party ¦ Katy goes to the seaside

This 'Out and About' series tries both to tell a story and to embrace the mathematical skills, counting, sorting and shape recognition, but to my mind it does neither satisfactorily. At the end of each double page spread a question is posed, for example: 'Find three things with which you dig the garden'. Such questions only serve to interrupt the flow of the story and positively militate against the development of reading fluency whether used by child and adult or child alone. The illustrations are uneven; those of people somewhat crudely executed whereas those of plants and animals are much better. Not a series I would want to use or recommend.