We bought my daughter the Tag Junior Reading system to try and encourage our daughter to enjoy books as at the time we were struggling a little to get her to read, one of the books that we bought to go with the system was the ABC Alphabet Orchestra book, the book is for Tag Junior and usually retail at around £10 although I have seen them for £5 recently which makes me think there could be a new system shortly.

The book is bright green in colour with a band across the top with the leapfrog logo in the top left corner and the Tag Junior logo in the top right hand corner. On the front of the book there is a large elephant playing a guitar and then the ABC part of the title is in capitals and different colours - pink, red and orange. The rest of the title for the book is written in much smaller blue lettering as it the illustrator details at the bottom of the front cover. The front cover is like the rest of the pictures in the book as in the colours are rather muted rather than being bright like usual on kids things.

The book is made of thick cardboard the same as a baby book would be and your child uses the Tag Junior device to place on the pages and it will read out different things and make different noises. As you would expect from the title of the book this one contains the alphabet and each page has one or two letters on it in the order of the alphabet and with each letter there is an animal beginning with that letter and an instrument. For example A is an armadillo's accordion and then so on throughtout the alphabet. When the reading device touches a letter the letter sound is read out and then the child can place the device on the picture and they will be told the animal and instrument and the noise that it makes. On the final page there are a number of animals from the book with their instruments which all make different noises when the device passes over.

I liked this booked as i felt it introduced rarer animals, the alphabet and different instruments which little ones toys don't usually teach but my daughter was never so keen. The pictures are big and bold but in quite toned down colours so didn't really grab her attention and she wasn't at a stage where she would be practicing her alphabet when she first got it so the most enjoyment she got from it was pointing out the animals she already knew and making animal noises. My daughter is now four and will occassionally play with the device and books but we have since bought her the next reading system so she plays with that more. I think an alphabet book at 2 years may be a bit much for some young children to take in.