Beyond Eyes and Ears

How Flaps, Textures and Buttons Make Reading More Fun

Babies "read" with their eyes, mouth, nose, fingers and ears. Interactive books, with flaps to lift, textures for touching, and buttons for pushing, put a whole world of cause and effect well within a baby's grasp. Reading any book is an interactive experience; nothing happens until and unless you turn the page. Books with extra elements like flaps or eyeholes invite the reader to do even more.

For babies, touching is an act of discovery. A book that invites her to touch is a book that invites her in, although she will reach out and touch any book you offer. One of the ways she knows the apple on the page isn't real is by putting out her hand. Cloth books, like Faces (with its charming pop-up baby face), make good choices for the youngest babies. They're lightweight, easy to manipulate, and become a cross between book and cuddly toy for a baby who can clutch them in her fist.

Books with textures, like Quack Quack and Moo! Moo! What Are You? help engage all of baby's senses. Textured pages look different, they feel different, they may even sound different. Buttons offer another tactile experience with their irresistible invitation to push. The buttons on Woof and Meow are big enough to reward a baby whose poking finger isn't yet entirely accurate with the button they're seeking to push.

Older babies will appreciate the opportunity to leap right into a book's world by lifting up a sturdy flap to discover what lies underneath it. The flaps are an extension of peek-a-boo, that most congenial and universal of games. You can play peek-a-boo with any book, of course, by opening and shutting the pages, but books like What Does Baby Say? invite baby to experiment on her own. Flaps also invite simple conversations. "What's under there?" you can ask, even though you both know. You can be silly, and guess wrong. You can pretend to be scared—"What if it's a spider?" Both of you know that it's not—but it's behind the flap! What if—just this once—it is?

Interactive books for toddlers ask even more of their young readers. Books like Play Colors invite them to remove the pieces and put them back in their proper place. Look at Me!, with eyeholes sized just right for a child, is a game, a mask, and an endlessly funny joke masquerading as a simple book. Holes work well in books for all ages of babies. There's something so appealing about a hole in something that would normally be so solid. Baby Faces includes holes for exploring faces and smiles, while Moo! Moo! has both textures and holes that let the reader peek through to the texture on the next page.