Lit Kid: pulling strings and lifting flaps

Mini Reader continues to have some clearly expressed views about books. Amongst them are:

Flaps are good.

There is a whole slew of lift the flap books out there. Mini has a particular fondness for Spot the dog, who has a good number of flap books to his credit, but there are many others besides that get the seal of approval.

For those mini readers who can’t yet read, may not be quite at spelling things out, but still want to interact with a book, flaps give the opportunity to do something while reading. And hopefully find some fun surprises too.

So here’s a little round-up of lift the flap books – and their cousins, those ‘pull the tab’ types. (I’ll explain more below.)

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Where’s Spot? – Eric Hill

Much of the fun of lift the flap books is about finding things. It’s the book equivalent of Hide and Seek, or Peek a Boo.

In this book, Spot’s mum is looking for him at teatime, but she can’t find him.

As she searches round the house, she finds lots of places he isn’t – but a number of other animals are there instead. Hippos, snakes, penguins, they’re all here – as are the opportunities to give them voices as you read.

One of the things I like about this one is the false ending. The mummy dog thinks she’s found Spot, gets fooled again – and then gets a tip as to where he actually is.

Having found him, there’s still the drawing him back to why she was looking for him in the first place: there’s a meal to be eaten.

I like the ‘bounce’ of the illustrations for Spot. They are simple, but there is something in the quality of the illustrations that adds humour.

I also like the choices of animals: not just the hippo but also one of the little birds that hangs out with hippos. Not just one, but three penguins, all ready to tell you that you’ve not found him quite yet.

We’re equally fond of Spot Bakes a Cake. The child can relate to an adult’s birthday coming up, and wanting to be involved. Spot predictably gets a bit carried away with the mixing and the icing, but the result is still appreciated.

I like the author’s ear for understanding how children see themselves having achieved the whole – when actually a parent has been alongside them for much of the process.

So Spot’s dad congratulates him on the cake (complete with decorative dog bones), and Spot says:

‘Thanks Dad. Mum helped a bit.’

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Rod Campbell is also well known for flap books. Dear Zoo is a classic – the kind where a child tries to choose a pet, but the various choices don’t quite suit.

(If you like that kind of storyline, I also highly recommend Lauren Child’s I Want a Pet, and Satoshi Kitamura’s A Boy Wants a Dinosaur – both for older readers than the flap book types, but both lots of fun.)

Rod Campbell’s visual style is quite similar to that of Eric Hill, so if your child likes one, they’ll probably like the other.

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On the non-fiction side of things, Usborne has cornered the market with lift the flap books with a difference. These are large scale hardbacks, but on all kinds of different subjects, particularly history and science.

In this case, lifting the flap means finding out more: seeing inside the body, or a medieval castle, or the workings of a toaster. The range is called See Inside, and I can highly recommend them.

While there’s a focus on being informative, there’s also a good sense of humour too – a little gentle poking fun at the weirder aspects of life in the past (e.g. the inner workings of Roman bath houses), or of our bodies, and so on.

If you have readers who like spotting things, being able to spot the flap and find out more works well. See these as natural companions if your junior readers are of the Guiness Book of World Records persuasion.

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Lift the flaps are fairly easy, and a good intro to those all-important paper-moving skills which allow you to turn the page.

But there are plenty of books which combine them with more complex mechanisms, including tabs to pull, wheels to move round, and so on.

So the final cheer goes to The Tickle Book, which has flaps, tabs, wheels, and generally all three, on every double spread.

Author Ian Whybrow is also the one behind Harry and the Dinosaurs books, while illustrator Axel Scheffer (of Gruffalo fame) leads a quirky touch to the drawings.

The elusive Ticklemonster (who can be coaxed out of hiding with the appropriate tab or flap) is a fairly wild looking being, complete with a feather duster for enhanced tickling. Ken Dodd would be proud.

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The downside to flaps, tabs and the rest is the overall wear and tear.

It’s not so bad on board books, but even there the flaps can become permanently folded or – sometimes with library books – removed altogether by an over-enthusiastic hand.

So if your readers are more on the mini side of things, and your book is multi-tabbed, urge a little caution. Model how to use the various parts of the book carefully.

And if the worst has already come to the worst, most of these can still be moved about with a finger if the tab or wheel has ceased to function or has gone missing entirely.

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We all like a few surprises. For your mini readers, surprises that are predictable –
the equivalent of telling a favoured joke again and again.

For your junior readers, genuine surprises and discoveries are in order – the kind that evoke at least a few wows, and maybe some giggles too.

 

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