Little Visdo has his favourite characters that get him excited—the Mr. Men characters, Elmo and his Sesame Street friends, and even Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends. Lately though, he is starting to recognize a set of Disney characters as well. Winnie the Pooh and his friends are starting to become part of his world now. I guess it wasn't surprising when he came home one day with a new book called Pooh Blocks, part of the Pooh Adorables collection. The book features baby Pooh, baby Piglet, baby Tigger, and baby Roo having fun with blocks.

Pooh Blocks is sub-categorized under the Thinkables collections, meaning that these board books are combined with interactive wooden play pieces. In this particular instance, three wooden blocks with images are attached to the pages that can be rotated. The objective is to match the blocks with the images on the pages.

Each character is associated with a certain block challenge:
•         Pooh stacks alphabet blocks;
•         Piglet stacks number blocks;
•         Tigger stacks shape blocks;
•         Roo stacks picture blocks.

The illustrations are very clear and rendered using computer graphics. The blocks on the pages are very noticeable and match the actual wooden blocks attached to the pages. So with the alphabet page, as Pooh shows how he stacks the "A, B, C" blocks, children can do the same by flipping through the wooden blocks and matching what Pooh has accomplished.

Little Visdo is still figuring out the correlation between the picture blocks and the wooden blocks but he's astute enough to identify the images on the actual blocks. He can recite "A, B, C" and "1, 2, 3" quite easily. He even knows his shapes and the colours as well. Even more impressive is listening to him identify the pictures of the bee and flower; the honeypot is still foreign to him.

Pooh Blocks is a simple concept but very innovative in its approach. I do know that this book holds interest for Little Visdo as he often calls for it to be read to him. He loves showing off his knowledge and is enthusiastic about it. I was more impressed to find this for a really great bargain. Normally, this retails at $8.99 but we managed to find a brand, new copy for $1.49 at a local store. This is only one book in a series of six: two books in the Thinkables collections, two in the Hummables, and two in the Readables. Considering how much he enjoys Pooh and his friends, it's only a matter of time before the rest of these books are added to his library.


Product Details
ISBN: 0736423060
Format: Hardcover, 12pp
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Pub. Date: July 2005


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This is part of carstairs38's Second Annual All Things Disney Write Off.

This is also part of sleeper54's Lean-n-Mean VIII Write Off, hosted this year by jurgrace and jenniferkateab.

Recommended: Yes