Noddy Look and Learn Play Box!

Includes Numbers, 978-0007166985, Colours, 978-0007166978, Patterns, 978-0007166992 and Shapes, 978-0007166961, 10pp each.

I wouldn’t go for Noddy. It’s all a question of taste. But we know that children have no taste, and actually little children would love these books. Noddy features in each one, with his house and his car and his plane and his friends. The pictures are bold, colourful, realistic computer graphics with lots of detail, and the lift-up flaps are irresistible. There’s Noddy fixing his car with three tools to count: a hammer, a spanner and a screwdriver. Noddy and Big Ears are at the party under the mushroom house, and we have to find the flap hiding the purple balloon. Lift up the bedspread, and there is Noddy lying in bed wearing stripy pyjamas. There’s a parade of friends marching behind Noddy’s car, under the triangular flags. I prefer to lift the flap and find a picture, which you do in the colours and patterns book. A two-year-old might be disappointed to find under the flap of three tools just the numeral 3, or under the flap showing the wheel to find the word ‘circle’. But then just lifting a flap is fun in itself, and think of all that valuable talk!