Noah's Ark product reviews

The cover of Noah's Ark is appealing with the cute animals with little button eyes. I love the fact that the book is hardboard and that the arch at the top of the book allows for a child to hold onto it as though it has a handle. The wide spectrum of colours is visually attractive and exciting for children. The book is structured with the pages shaped in the forms of different animals. This is a novel and appropriate form for the subject covered. You can see some of the animals from one page to the next, allowing for a 3D effect to the book.

My 4 year old son and I looked at this book together and he loved talking about the animals and finding two animals of each kind on the pages. Things got a bit complicated when he couldn't see elephants on the page where elephants were itemised in the text. He did find them where he could see through to the other pages but was a bit confused when there were parts of three elephants on these other pages. He said "there were only supposed to be two - not three because God said so". It also seemed that the layers created by the different shaped pages meant that we could see wet environments from the dry pages. It didn't seem like it was an 'inside outside' variation as part of the story.

If it was just a picture book and it didn't have any words, I think that this book would be lovely. I find that the text in the book actually takes away from the beautiful illustrations. The text is written to rhyme and if you look hard it pretty much does. However, the rhythm of the words don't flow nicely and I found myself having to read some of the pages a couple of times in order to get the rhythm right. I thought I might be reading it incorrectly and missing the designed rhythm, so I got another couple of people to read it and they had the same response - it doesn't quite flow.

I found that the written part of this book was over the head of my two year old and not enough substance to the storyline for my four year old. This illustrations did supply lots of discussion points and my four year old did rather enjoy the book, despite my adult opinion of the book. The price does make it an affordable addition to a book collection in a home.

Dr. Margi McCombs version of Noah's Ark is aimed at toddlers and was very popular with two of my homebased carekids (21 months and 2.5 years). The first thing that attracted them to the book was the unusual shape. It has cutouts of the animals and a rainbow over the top which creates a handle to carry the book around. I am not sure whether the publishers intended this but it is a natural handbag shape. A word of warning for parents with this book: The toddlers love carrying it around so as a result I found it in lots of very interesting places and never on the bookshelf. The other thing that really appealed to them was the bright colours of the cute animals and the reflective foil of the title. There is a good variety of animals (not just mammals) and these differ on each page which helped the young ones learn the different animal's names especially for those that are at the every bird is a duck stage.

With it's thick board pages it is made to withstand being read over and over again (and even chewed a bit) by young children. The text is very short, just a rhyming couplet on each page. My older children liked to pat to the beat of the words as I read it. The other thing the older preschoolers enjoyed doing was naming all the animals and matching up the pairs (which couldn't be do on every page but they still tried). This also started a discussion about how the male and female duck are different colour and the male lion has a mane but the female doesn't.

This is definitely a Christian book unlike many that try to make this Biblical story secular. It would be great on the bookshelf of a church playgroup or Christian family. Priced at $12 it is great value for money and would make a great gift for a baby or toddler. It is an affordable addition to a gift hamper or stocking filler which I am sure the child will love.