The lovely people at Parragon Books very kindly sent Little Star a selection of books from their new ‘Little Learners’ range. The range has been developed for babies through to toddlers to encourage interactive play between parent and baby. This means these lovely books are bright and colourful and most importantly, fun for baby!
I have 3 little book loving nippers, two of them fall in to the target audience for these books – Roo, 2 and Happy, 7 months. So I handed the books over to them to see what they thought!
What’s in the package?
We were lucky enough to receive 4 books from Parragon;
- ‘This Little Piggy’ (Finger Puppet – Super cute little board book of the well known nursery rhyme, with a piggy finger puppet poking his head out the middle!
- ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ (Light-up Sound) – Another nursery rhyme book, with cute owl illustrations and 4 twinkly buttons to press (one playing the tune, and the other 3 making ‘hoot hoot’ and starry noises!)
- ‘My Day’ (Touch & Feel) – Simple and colourful, with big touchy feely pictures, and
- ‘Peek-a-Boo Friends’ – Animals hiding & peeking through holes with a narrative full of juicy verbs and onomatopoeia!
What did mummy think?
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked these books! They are cute, without being too cutesy or twee. So much nicer than anything similar that we already have in our vast library of half chewd board books! I absolutely love the illustrations in ‘This Little Piggy’ especially. Visually, all the books are bold yet in soft colours – I enjoyed the simplicity of them, the pages are not too busy or crowded. Other things that endeared me to these books is that unlike other noisy books we have had the sounds on ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ aren’t too loud and are actually nice & soothing! They are nicely made and of good quality – any of the books from the range would make gorgeous new baby or Christening gifts. Also the pages are chunky enough to withstand chewing and dribble!
What did bubs think?
‘This Little Piggy’ was definitely the most popular. Be it Roo wiggling and chatting to the piggy, or Happy chewing his face….they both get a lot of entertainment from that book! If left on his play-mat Happy is drawn to the books and likes to pick them up and wave them around, and it is easy to keep his attention when we sit and read them together. It was lovely to watch my 4 year old get involved and ‘read’ to his brothers. With ‘My Day’ they are able to have a lot of interaction with the book, feeling and rubbing the different textures and ‘Peek-a-Boo Friends’ also had a lot to explore. I think Roo has just got a tad too old for this range, although the pictures gave him lots to chat about and prompts him to point out colours, and extend his vocabulary. For Happy the books are just perfect!
Value for money?
The books range from £3.99 to £5.99 which I think is good value, and a price I wouldn’t think twice about paying if I saw them in a shop.
Overall – 9/10
Every parent has ‘those’ books, the ones you make disappear by sneakily kicking under the sofa or the sound books that you just can’t refrain from going at with a screwdriver to remove the batteries ‘oh dear, it doesn’t seem to be working…’ but two weeks in I have not had the slightest desire to do that with any of these books! In fact we have read them at least a couple of times a day since we received them, and both the bubs and me are still very much enjoying them and I think I may even look in to getting a couple more from the range!
Note: Erica was provided with these book for the purpose of review, but her opinions are her own. This post contains affiliate links.
Helen
Helen is a mum to two, social media consultant, and website editor; and this site is (we think) the only Social Enterprise parenting magazine! Since giving up being a business analyst when juggling travel, work and kids proved too complicated, she founded KiddyCharts so she could be with her kids, and use those grey cells at the same time. KiddyCharts has reach of over 1.1million across social and the site. The blog works with big family brands (including travel) to help promote their services, as well as offering free resources to parents of kids under 10. It gives 51%+ profits to Reverence for Life, who fund a number of important initiatives in Africa, including bringing running water and basic equipment to a school in Tanzania. Helen has worked as a digital marketing consultant (IDM qualified) with various organisations, including Channel Mum, Truprint, Talk to Mums, and Micro Scooters. She loves to be creative in the brand campaigns she works on. Get in touch TODAY!