I know that technically books are not toys, but they are if you are fourteen months old, and these books have demonstrated excellent qualities as both books AND toys in our household.

First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever met an Usborne book that I haven’t liked.  We own TONS of Usborne books thanks to our main school curriculum Sonlight.  They use a lot of their books, especially for science.  So the Usborne reputation preceded the arrival of this line of books to our home.

My sister bought two of the above for Cap’n Jack Henry for his birthday in November and then another one for Christmas, and there is not another book in this house that entertains him more.

Let’s take a look….

The cover is the first page of the story.  Every page then goes through a series of four or five things that are not ours.  In essence we are looking for our thing…whatever it is.  In this case, it’s our pirate, and as you can see, the one on the cover is not ours because his scarf is too rough.  You can then touch the scarf and feel for yourself.  Yep, too rough.  Not our pirate.  (Not to mention that guy is waaaaaay too wimpy looking to be our pirate.)

Page after chunky page we look for our pirate, but there’s always some tactical clue that the pirate is an imposter.  This one has a shiny cutlass, but from the look of his cheek, I’d say it was perhaps too sharp.

And then, finally, on the last page, we find what we are looking for…

Our very own pirate…

We know he’s ours because his beard is so fluffy (and he has a skull and crossbones on his hat…always a sure sign).  *Contented sigh*

As far as quality, they are superior to most board books.  First of all, the textured pieces are very secure.  Your baby or toddler will not be able to rip off the beard or make scratches in the cutlass or whatever.  Secondly, the pages are very thick.  Jack Henry can turn them on his own very easily, and his little razor-teeth can’t, no matter how hard he tries, bite off a chunk.

The other books we own are…

and…

They run about $9 a piece, would entertain up to about a four or five year-old and can be purchased here or here or here.

I am definitely going to be adding to our collection soon.  I can’t wait to find out who our monster is and which snowman belongs to us.  Compelling stuff, indeed!