I tend to be a stickler for certain things. One is grammar: grammatical errors tend to get under my skin, though I do pretty well at overlooking an honest mistake here and there. (And I know that now that I say that, many of you will comb this review for any grammatical oversight - I do not claim perfection! ;) ) The other pet peeve of mine is off-pitch music. It doesn't bother me at all when folks are singing their hearts out and they happen to be off pitch - not everybody can sing on pitch all of the time, and I appreciate the enthusiastic raising of one's voice despite musical quality or lack thereof. However, when my daughters receive a toy that plays electronic songs, I expect the toy to play the melodies correctly. If the song is in the key of G, for example, then it plays an F# when it comes to a place that requires a seventh... that type of thing.

I can hear you now... "What does this have to do with a V-tech electronic nursery rhyme book?" Funny that you should ask. Of the six melodies that this book plays, only one of them is completely free of incorrect notes. That's right, one. Now I admit, this toy plays the melodies in a much more complex manner than many toys. It is a far cry from Mozart, but it does have a nice little accompaniment in the background of each melody. It is often in the accompaniment that the errors lie - "Mary Had a Little Lamb," for instance, is fine until we get to "its fleece was white" and listen to the background music, only to find that the chords played here provide an excellent example of dissonance.

I consider myself relatively tolerant with this type of thing and my children. I am the only parent of toddlers I know who has an entire box of music toys: toy drums, a harmonica, two low-end penny whistles, a "trumpet" and "saxophone" (fancy whistles, really), bells to shake, and other rhythm instruments. I can put up with a lot in the name of music. (And my girls love testing that statement!) But having random wrong notes strewn here and there throughout a musical rhyme book was just a bit much for me.

So what is this toy really like, and what did I do?

Well, after my initial shock, I decided to just deal with it. After all, the girls seemed to enjoy the toy, and listening to a few wrong notes will not destine them to be tone deaf for life. They were only seven months old at the time, after all.

Here is what the toy (purchased by my loving brother who enjoys giving noisy gifts to his nieces and nephews) consists of:

o The book is solid, durable plastic in primary colors. Unlike the typical book, the pages are molded and cannot bend, not even a little (not a problem with me).

o There are six pages (three two-page spreads), and each contains a single nursery rhyme. Three of these rhymes, Pat-a-Cake, Hey, Diddle Diddle, and This Little Piggy, had songs that were new to me, as I had only heard them spoken before. I was glad to learn the melodies (though unless the key switches to minor in the middle of the melody, at least two of these contain one or more wrong notes).

o The rhymes are typical ones that we, in America anyhow, traditionally teach our children. They include Mary Had a Little Lamb; Hickory, Dickory Dock; This Little Piggy; Hey Diddle, Diddle; Pat-a-Cake; and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Each rhyme has the words clearly placed with a nice illustration.

o You may be looking for an "on/off" switch. Well, look all you wish, because it isn't there. When the book is closed, it is off and plays no music. When it is opened, it welcomes a child, telling her, "It's storytime!" There are two arrows on the spine that are visible between the pages. The child is to push the arrow pointing toward the page he or she wishes to hear about, and the rhyme's melody will play. Alternatively, a sound (like a twinkley, fairy dust type of sound for Twinkle, Twinkle) will play when the same arrow is hit.

Now do any of you remember the "butterfly ballot" fiasco in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election? These arrows are much like that butterfly ballot. I am not certain how a child of less than one year is supposed to figure out what an arrow is and what the little triangle at one end of the bar means. My daughters never did figure that out. They just shut the book and opened it back up to a different page to make it sing, rather than pushing the funny button.

o The book not only greets a child when it is opened, but the book says "The End" when closed. A nice touch, I think. Or at least is SAID "The End" when closed.

o An adjustable red, plastic strap is included to allow the book to be attached to something... I assume a stroller or crib. We never used it for this purpose, but the red strap was my girls' favorite part of the toy. (They were hard to impress at the age of seven months!)

Hey - why am I talking about this toy in the past tense?

Again, good question. In the "How many wrong notes can Mommy handle before the book wears out" battle, Mommy won. I had heard good things about V-tech, and I was quite surprised when about six weeks after Christmas, the book started giving us trouble. It wouldn't always play when opened, and it started cutting out in the middle of songs. Then came the time when the book had to be opened five or six times in succession before it would play. And finally, one day, it met a sad death. A hard plastic book with only six pages isn't worth much if its other features are nonfunctioning, we decided.

We read the little direction booklet that had come with it, and in order to try to get anything out of it as far as warranty was concerned, we would have to send it back to my brother on the other side of the nation, or mail in the toy... frankly, for a toy that irritated me anyhow, I was in no frame of mind to follow either of these steps. On top of that, I had nine-month-old twins. They were just learning to crawl, and I barely had enough energy to deal with them, let alone fight for the replacement of a relatively inexpensive toy. If this happened now (more than a year later), I would contact the company, but at the time, I just put it in a box. After we tried fixing it (to no avail), it finally and unceremoniously met its end in file 13.

The final word

I must admit that I feel a bit bad even writing this review. It is my seventeenth review, and only the second time that I have written a review on an item that I do not recommend. However, I think you will agree that our experience gave us little reason to recommend this toy.

We do have three other V-tech toys, all of which function great. Now the musical ball (no off switch here, either) has wrong notes in just two of its songs (Brahms' Lullaby and Sailing, Sailing), and the sort-and-go car just has one note off in one of the same songs, Sailing, Sailing. My girls love both toys, the car in particular, and they play with them quite often. I am also happy to report that our V-tech "Baby Blossom" toys are free of dissonance. The girls don't play with them very much, but they at least hear the right notes when they do.

I am glad to read of folks who really like the Little Smart Storytime Rhymes book. If you decide to purchase it, I hope that you have better luck than we did! If you are looking for an alternative, there are a number of excellent children's books on the market, so you need not look far. Despite what epinions may say at the bottom of this page, I wouldn't look to the "American Girls" as an alternative - those will be age-appropriate for your child in roughly a decade.

(Whew... their... I think I maid it without no grammer mustakes!)
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This review is a part of a toy write-off hosted by jenni1396. Happy birthday, Jenni!

The other participants include the following:
Aahz, amknight, ar_c, bmcnichol, bpotter1, charlenep, char.mike, cherokeelady, CJsMommy, cntaur5, cyndicm, dad2nat, damienmommie, dandj, Debbie26, DEjrBudweiser8, dydx, fisch, goldjay, HawgWyld, jeanniekerns, jenni1396, jessica1137, jo.com, KateTPZ, kay67, kminer, lisado, Lisa_J, maggsmomm, MelissaSRN, mellkinwa, mimi369, mininut, mom2daniel, monical2me, mtbat, MumMumMum, naphtalia, nwinston, pacbaystat, Patch3boys, Presleysmama, quasar, RCarte2000, 77chelle, shantel575, sloving, smh32775, Staceys1, sweetsue_98, TazzyFoxy, tchoate, telefrog, three_ster, Trevsmom, trthomp, unowho72, willeftk


Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): gift
Type of Toy: Baby Toy
Age Range of Child: 12 to 36 Months