Have you heard of Imagine That Publishers’ Storymaker books that have been lauched this week? They are fun, interactive, board books that encourage children to choose what happens next in the story.

We’ve read both the Dinosaurs LOVE Stinky Socks! and the Unicorns LOVE Rainbow Pants! books and adore them both. Dinosaurs and Unicorns are incredibly popular with young children so it was no surprise that these books were a big hit with the children.

How do they work?

Each, brightly illustrated, page has a question. For example, ‘Where so Dinosaurs love to sleep?’ The next page then has the start of the answer ‘Dinosaurs sleep in a …’ Children are then given a choice of 3 pop-out picture cards to physically put into the story and complete the sentence. This allows them to be actively involved in the story by deciding what will happen next.

• Fun & Novel – From the minute we read the titles of the books ‘Dinosaurs LOVE Stinky Socks!’ and ‘Unicorns LOVE Rainbow Pants‘ it was clear they were going to be the perfect combination of fun and silliness for little ones. The stories are made up of  humorous questions and even funnier answers to choose from. The children had lots of giggles creating their own funny stories to amuse each other with. In my opinion, it is such a brilliant way emphasise to young children how enjoyable reading and storytelling can be!

• Appeals to Kineathetic Learners- These books are ideal for young children that don’t enjoy passively listening to books being read to them, but prefer to learn and play by ‘doing’. Children can physically pull out the story option cards from each new page and push them into the square to complete the story. We found that the interactive nature of this book kept children’s interest for longer than other board books.

• Different Story (almost!) Every Time– The Storymaker books allow you to create different stories almost every time you read the book which keeps the books fresh and interesting. The concept also encouraged the children to want to read the books over and over again to try and make as many different stories as they could. It became a bit of a challenge in our house!

• Introduces the Concept of Writing a Story to Children- It’s difficult to imagine, but who knows, that 3 year old child sat next to you enjoying this book could go on to be a famous author!  This activity, of creating stories together, could be the seed that plants the idea in their head of becoming an author. We adored that the concept of story making is introduced to children in these books. The children loved that they were in control of what happened next in the book and we thought it was a wonderful way of encouraging creativity and a love of making stories together.

• Imaginative Play-  Young children are often fans of imaginative play, it can provide a fun way of helping them make sense of the world we live in (find out more about imaginative play here) and these books allow children to play imaginatively whilst also building literacy skills and a love of books.

• Develops Early Comprehension Skills- Comprehension is the important skill of being able to understand the text that has been read and it can be tricky for many children. Sometimes children can become excellent at reading words, as a process, but if you ask them what has happened in the story, are unable to tell you. As the format of these books make children stop and think about the story and what is happening throughout, I believe these could provide early building blocks for the skills needed for comprehension.

• Help Extend Speech and Language Skills– Often, when trying to help teach a child to speak, we end up looking at books with them and asking them questions such as ‘what’s this?’ Or ‘what colour is this?’. Understandably these sorts of questions (closed questions) don’t encourage children to give more than single word answers in return and they can also (in my experience) put children off answering. These books are great as they provide fantastic prompts for developing full sentence answers throughout. Have a read here about How Reading can Develop Speech and Language Skills.

Where can you buy these books?

Buy Dinosaurs LOVE Stinky Socks on Amazon here or Hive here and Unicorns LOVE Rainbow Pants on Amazon here or Hive here.

Visit Imagine That Publishers website here.

Why not follow Imagine That Publishers on Social Media? Here’s their Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages.

* Please note this blog post was sponsored. All thoughts and opinions are our own.