Tails
A teacher’s look at why this book belongs in the Lap Listeners stage.
Why it fits Lap Listeners (for babies in their first year, when books are about your voice, not the plot)
Tails to pull, fuzz to pat, a scratch-and-sniff skunk - a full sensory playground. Van Fleet builds books like activity gyms. It grows with the baby well into toddlerhood.
What makes it special
Van Fleet builds multi-sensory machines: fur, foil, scratch-and-sniff, and a pull-tab finale in one sitting. The photographic-collage animals are goofy and bright, engineered for the lap-distance close-up. It's proof that 'interactive media' was perfected in cardboard before anyone owned a tablet.
From the publisher
Rhyming text, textured illustrations, lift-up flaps, and scratch-and-sniff spots teach about animal names, shapes, colors, and numbers, one to…
About Matthew Van Fleet
Matthew Van Fleet makes board books that invite toddlers to touch, press, pull, lift and even sniff their way through colours, shapes, numbers, letters and opposites. Tails and Dog were #1 New York Times bestsellers, and his books have sold more than 10 million copies.
Also by this author: Dog · Moo · Heads
More from “Touch, Pat, Peek”
This book is part of The Best Books for Babies: 30 Teacher Picks (Lap Listeners) in our guide The Best Children’s Books by Age — 120 books chosen by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX. Come see how we build readers →
Nobody paid for this review — not the author, not the publisher — and the store link above earns us nothing. Our only interest is the reader this book fits.