Lift the flap farmyard fun! (Farm Animals)

Member Name: mumto3

Product:	Farm Animals
Date:	09/11/08 (91 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Different from normal animals books for this age group

Disadvantages: some of the flaps are small and fiddly for little fingers

The Dorling Kindersley Lift-the-flap Farm animals book is a lovely picture book aimed at pre-school children.

It is a board book with six pages with each double page featuring at least two flaps to lift. The animals pictures in the book feature real animals rather than drawings or cartoon animals. The backgrounds are either pale colours or white which makes the vibrant pictures stand out very well.

Each double page in the book is broken down into sections such as:

Farm Friends - This section shows some of the first farm animals that a child may learn to identify including sheep, cows, horses and pigs. There are two flaps on this first double page the first revealing a flock of sheep and the second two horses running together.

Farm Families - This section shows adult animals and their young. The animals shown include ducks and ducklings and hens and chicks. There are three flaps on this double page covering more pictures of adult animals with their young including a chick hatching from an egg.

Favourite Foods - This section focuses on the foods that animals eat and shows sheep eating grass and goats eating leaves amoung others. There are three flaps on this page that lift to reveal a field of wheat and a lamb being fed from a bottle.

Happy Homes - This section shows some of the types of accomodation used to house farm animals including a pigpen and a beehive. There are three flaps on this page that hide bees making honey and a horse being groomed.

Animal Noises - This double page features many well known animals and the sound they make is written beside each animal. For example there is a picture of a cow and the word Moo! alongside it. There are three flaps included in these pages covering a chick cheeping and a piglet squealing.

Animal Varieties - These pages show that there are different varieties of even the most common animal. The book concentrates on four breeds of animal but under the flaps different breeds can be found like a highland and a holstein cow.

From the Farm - This is the last section of the book and shows what things are produced on the farm including eggs, honey and wool. Under the flaps you see honey being collected from hives and a cow being milked.

I have not included all the information in this review as I would not like to spoil the book if you decided to read it with your child.

I chose this book from my local library for my son when he was nearly two. I liked the book because the pictures were bright and inviting but also because it wasn't the normal animal book that you find for this age group. We had grown a little tired of the normal picture books of animals and I felt that this book would not only be more interesting because of the lift-the-flap aspect but also educational because of the information about what is produced on the farm. I liked the fact that the book had pictures of real animals and that there weren't too many pictures per page as this can be confusing to young children.

The only real drawback I have found with this book is that the flaps are quite small and can be difficult to open. I think this book would be unsuitable for very young children but is ideal once a child can recognise a few animals.

My son loved this book so much that when it came time to return the book I decided to buy a copy for my family. My son is now three years old and still loves this book. I am hoping that my youngest who is only 11 months at the moment will also grow into this book and love it just as much.

Information from the book - other titles in the series include Things that go, All about me, Colours, Numbers, Opposites, Shapes, Sizes, Time and Counting.

ISBN 0-7894-9235-0

This book makes a nice change from the normal animal picture books.

Summary: Makes a nice change from your normal farm animal books