BABY, SEE THE COLORS!

Identify and learn about colors in this soft but durable book.

Designed by someone familiar with the particular kinds of, erm, love and attention that babies give books, this offering stands up to being chewed, moistened, and tugged upon. Less successfully, it’s insubstantially thin, meaning it may quickly vanish into a diaper bag’s detritus. However, if one can find it, it’s a treat to share with a little one. Graphically simple domestic and neighborhood scenes in lively primary colors are populated with cheery, doll-like characters. The pages are organically filled with circle-cheeked people of various skin tones and ethnicities as well as a person using a wheelchair. Simple text lyrically discusses the color featured on each double-page spread, engaging kids through a patterned text that presents specific questions followed by open-ended ones: “Feel the cool green grass? What else is green?” There’s plenty to find amid the flat art, such as green frogs and turtles or yellow bananas or giraffes, setting the stage for meaningful interaction and vocabulary building. It all wraps up on a sunny playground, with all of the colors surrounding the children in a “colorful world.” Companion books about shapes and numbers are almost as successful; the art’s clean lines work especially well in Baby, Find the Shapes. Baby Let’s Count stars ever popular farm animals, but having the numbers one to four sharing a double-page spread is confusingly busy.

Colorful fun for the littlest listeners.