Clever Books - A new way to encourage Reading

Children love books, but they also love to get hands on with things and young children especially may rip pages as they twist them as they go through a story.  It's always great to show children a real book and encourage the interest and respect for the pages, but sometimes children just want to get involved and be able to manipulate the pages in their own way. And anything that encourages children to flick through a story is a definite plus.

Autumn Publishers have created a new book which enables young children and reluctant readers to look at books in a new way - A Clever Book. Which will be available July 2013

These books are strong and sturdy and open out in a very clever way.

Each fold on the book opens up a new section of the story to look at and a new snippet of text to read.

This is a brand new concept of books for young children and we were lucky enough to be sent the very first review copy prior to release to have a look at and let Autumn Publishing know what we think.

The book we were sent was Hello Kitty themed, which is a hugely popular character with young children. The house shaped book showed Hello kitty and her family and friends in various rooms around the house.

In each picture Hello Kitty was doing something new and the text was simple explaining what was happening.

My three children all love the folding concept of the book, even the older two thought it was very clever, and enjoyed folding it, but obviously at 9 and 11 years old they are not in the age range for the Clever books, my 5 year old however found it very interesting.

He is a bit of a reluctant reader and is far more of a hands on child and so the puzzle concept appealed to him, and he was intrigued enough to sit with the book for a long time and read the captions to the story and chat away about what was happening in Hello Kittys home.

Obviously Hello Kitty isn't really one of his favoured Characters, and I wanted to see what different aged children made of the Clever books too, so I invited my nieces aged 4 and 5 years old to come over and have a look along with their younger brother who has just turned 3 years old.

The girls loved it, especially the 4 year old, she instantly managed to suss out the folding, and was happy to sit and look through it time and time again, so impressed she would not leave it here for me and wanted to take it home!

The youngest of the bunch, Ryan at 3 years old struggled initially with the folding, but was very kean to have a good go, and as he turned and folded the book he really was kean to talk about what was happening on the pictures.

The Clever book is simply, clever. Please take a look at this video of my 4 year old niece, and just turned 3 year old nephew and me having a first look at the clever book.



The folding is great and the possibilities are endless for encouraging conversation whilst getting used to progressing through a story, but mostly children will just love to manipulate the book and watch as the new pictures appear each time they twist and fold the book.

At the moment, because this is a brand new concept for a book, there are only a couple of story ideas, one is the Hello Kitty book I have showed here, another is a Fisher Price Little people themed story. Autumn Publishing are hoping to increase the range of stories and I can't wait to see what other topics will become available in the clever book series.


Take a look at Jos review over at Mum Friendly too and if you are looking for other great reading resources then do check out Autumn Publishing they have a fantastic range of books to help encourage children to really have fun and learn whilst using books, included in their range they have scented books, sticker books and lots of work and activity books for children of all ages do check out their website or see their latest offers on their Facebook and Twitter pages.