INDEPENDENT READING LEVEL: (2-5 YEARS OLD)
REWARDS: none

I have mixed feelings about this book. The tracing and interactive flaps are engaging, and I haven't seen anything like it in other books. The finger tracing reminds me of some of the early Montessori letter recognition before a child could hold a pencil to help learn the shape of letters. That said, I have several criticisms as well.

1. The images are not in line with teaching phonics and beginning sounds. Please ensure the child has a good grasp of beginning sounds before this. For instance, I is for Ice cream, and O is for Orange.

2. The tracing is only for the capital letters, and then the letter of the object is also capitalized, which is not the correct case for a sentence and not what a child would see most often when reading.

I'd probably use this book for the tracing aspect or an educational activity when on the go. Still, it should be something other than the primary or even secondary way to teach letters.

Recommended age: 4-6 years

Writing style: This book has a lot of new vocabulary, but it's easy to guess because there is a single picture on each page. Each page goes like this: "N is for Nest" (lifts flap) "and nut."

Lexile score: AD30L
Decoding difficulty: 3/5
Vocabulary difficulty: 4/5
Sentences difficulty: 1/5
Patterns difficulty: 1/5

Illustration style: Cartoon-y illustrations. Most of the animals have giant smiles that you wouldn't see on the actual animals, as do the sun and moon.

Reality-based: Not really, but it does use familiar objects and animals. ( )

Alphabet book #1

This book is an interactive board book that would be perfect for primary readers. The book is filled with sight words. There are interactive flaps for the students to use to see their sight words, there is a tracing tool so students can trace their letters while they are still learning how to write. This book would be perfect in a preschool classroom or may at the beginning of a kindergarten year. ( )

I think this is a great interactive book for toddlers. Each page has an indented capital letter of the alphabet, traceable by finger, and it's lower-case version beside this. Under the letter is a statement such as "'A' is for apple," and under this is a flap with a picture on it, covering a picture of another example of the letter being used. ( )