where's the cat (Who's Hiding Around the Garden? - Debbie Tarbett)

Member Name: jillycat

Product:	Who's Hiding Around the Garden? - Debbie Tarbett
Date:	05/06/09 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great illustrations robust slide and seek to find animals

Disadvantages: none

This was a book that we bought for our son a few weeks ago after he had enjoyed a different book in the same series from the library and we thought we better get one of his own to enjoy.

This book is suitable for young children especially toddlers.

The book is described as a slide and seek book. What this means is that on every double page the right hand side slides out to reveal something in this case an animal that's hiding in the garden.

The story and action as it were in this book all centers around finding various animals around the garden. The story is told in rhyme for example

"I splash around the pond all day
I hope and dive and croak away"

Then in bolder type

"Who am I?"

The child then slides the book to reveal

" I'm Frog"

These rhymes and finding animals continues through snail, mole,,bird and cat till you get to the last double pages.
The Rhyme then is

"The garden's full of things to do
Come On, let's play at peek-a-boo!
Who am I?"

The slide then reveals a a safety mirror with the words above it being "I'm Me!"

The illustrations by Debbie Tarbett are wonderfully bright and interesting for example the pages to find the frog depict a pond with Lilly pads reeds bull rushes beetles and flies and before you slide the page to find the frog you can see part of the frogs legs and the sound the frog makes is written above.

My son loves this book and has read from the library the version of who's hiding in the snow and the Forrest hence why we bought him this book. I think its a great book to help children identify animals and we make the animal sounds to help him associate this with the animal. On the last page with the mirror he always gives the baby in the mirror a kiss and when we give this a wipe on the night it doesn't seem to damage the book in anyway.

One of the elements I like about these books is the slide and seek as it is more robust for him to handle than flaps in books which can get damaged and we have never had any problems with the sliding parts of either this book or the ones who took out of the library

I would definitely recommend this book to other parents and think it is a great value and fun children's books

Book details:
Who's Hiding around the garden by Debbie Tarbett and Susie Brooks

Format: Board book 14 pages

Date of publication: 03/07/2006

Publisher: Little Tiger Press

ISBN: 9781845063894

Available form Waterstones for £4.99 or £4.49 from Amazon

Summary: fantastic read for children with beautiful illustrations