TOUCH AND TRACE ABC
From the My First Home Learning series
by Harriet Evans ; illustrated by Jordan Wray
This alphabet board book is designed to help little fingers learn letter shapes.
As the title suggests, large, debossed letters provide pads for fingers to trace. Each page presents one large lowercase letter. A dotted line and arrow indicates which direction to move, and the separate strokes are numbered. In addition, each letter includes a description: “A is for Ant…and apple.” This sets a pattern for each page, in which the featured letter is capitalized, as is one example word; the other is lowercase. This could be confusing for prereaders who are looking at two different versions of the letter and practicing only one, especially when there is no key that shows both the upper- and lowercase letters side by side. As a means to actually teach the letters, this is a blunt instrument. It works best as a way to build fine-motor skills and provide exposure to letter shapes and vocabulary. The accompanying illustrations play a background role to the letter tracing and mostly just depict the example words. The animals within them, however, are darling, like the rabbit chomping on a radish and the moth angled toward the moon. Companion title Touch and Trace 123 is similar, encouraging children to trace the numerals 1 through 20, with counting and adding practice at the end.
It does as the title suggests but not much more.
(Board book. 2-5)