Pretty Cool or Painfully Hip, You Decide

A lot of times, when we buy gifts for a baby, we're really buying for the parents, and there's nothing wrong with that.  This past Christmas I bought two board books for my son from a nearby bookstore, specifically looking for books on counting, colors, or shapes.  I completely forgot about Kinokuniya's fabulous board book section at the Dubai Mall.  If I had remembered, I never would have picked up these books.


There wasn't a lot of choice, but Dwell Studio had some very attractive books. 

But while they were very trendy and pretty, they didn't seem very engaging.  Yes, the animals were all cute and rounded, there were some pull out pages, but the glossy coating on some of the images was the only oomph these books had.  I was also looking for possibly the world's most boring subject matter: numbers and shapes.  Was I being too demanding?


I was torn, super cute books but serious lack of child appeal.  I liked these images in their toys and puzzles, but the Dwell Studio style just wasn't doing it for me in a book format.  I ended up going with Count, it had lovely colors and really used the glossy layer to reinforce counted objects and the word for each number.  The whole book had visual and tactile appeal.  I did like Kitty in Squares, but I new my son would rip out that little finger puppet in no time flat.

The next was Orla Kiely's Colours and Numbers books.  

Kiely is currently a very popular designer in the UK and her books were very stylized.  I really liked that her book covers were covered in fabric, which will show dirt faster but felt so nice.  Her graphics used a bit more detail, showed shades of each color, and the repeated objet on the left hand page could be used for counting.  By far my favorite of the trendy books, so I picked up Colours as all of the remaining Numbers copies were damaged.

Again, these are all lovely books, but really do seem made for adults more than children.  We all love pretty book shelves, but children's books should engage in some way,  In my opinion there was nothing to draw children back to these books after looking at it once or twice.  The touch and feel books weren't even that impressive.  They were cute and attractive, but all of the touch and fell it bits felt the same.  It's like the main element, touch and feel, was sacrificed to maintain the series's chic look.


I think some of these would be great books to throw in with a baby shower gift, they look pretty and decorating the nursery is fun.  However, I would also even it out with a board book or two that have a bit more to offer story or illustration to offer.  There are some fabulous books available as board books now, like Oliver Jeffers, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, and Sam McBratney (there's a veritable library of Guess How Much I Love You books out now).