Book Review--Push The Button

Push the Button
Currently one of our favorite books for Liam, this book attracted his eye in the bookstore because of the large red push button that squeaks when pushed. For Liam it is important that we get high contrast books and typically pop up books, texture books, or books that make noises hold his attention well.
“Push the Button” is published by Begin Smart, and part of their collection of books for ages 12-18 month that encourage four basic things for babies:
*hand-eye coordination
*understanding cause and effect
*small motor skills development
*following directions

Most of the books in this age range from Begin Smart are made to teach your child to imitate sounds and name specific objects. (Shhhh, whoosh, squeeeeak, eeeek, splash, button, bee, flower, water, hat, box, etc.)
Their pages are filled with bright colors and most of them are very high contrast pages with large plain objects on each page.  It’s easy to focus on a certain object so you can point out things as you read to teach them instead of a jungle of images to distract attention.  Each page has only simple one-liners on them so that the child is not bored and transferring their attention elsewhere before you ever finish reading it to them--remember, their attention span is somewhere around  5-10 seconds right now, so they will probably not sit still for a long wordy book--a few seconds for each page is all you will get out of them at first.

These books also use large, bold black printed words with good spacing between the letters so that when it comes time to begin teaching letters and reading you can easily point out each letter as you sound them out with the child. (Very hard to do this with small, fine print books.)

In all, we found this book series to be very affective in: attracting and holding Liam’s attention, giving him strong images to point to,  large letters/words for when we start his learning to read, great sounds to make with him that also make him giggle and try to imitate, good thick pages for him to easily carry and flip through on his own, and giving him a squeaky button to learn the concept of pushing a button with.  It may annoy his parents to death but at least it’s a start towards his love for books and learning to sit down and read with us and you’ve got to start somewhere.

If you like this book here are some others in the collection of BEGIN SMART books for 12-18 months:
*Play Colors           *What Does Baby Say?
*Splish-Splash        *Peek-a-Boo What?
*All Gone!              *Moo! Moo! What Are You?