If there’s one area of publishing that digital formats could never compete with in our house, it’s children’s books. Kids’ ebooks and book apps, while often fun, remove the physicality of reading and often replace the parent’s role as reader; they’re more about distracting games and fun asides than they are bedtime bonding over familiar tales.
And to my mind the best books to share with young children are the interactive ones – interactive in the old-school, analogue sense, of course; books with flaps and fold-outs, textures and shaped pages, magic inks and paper puppets. These added components can emphasise story beats or complement the action – my own recent picture book, for instance, The Lavender Blue Dress, with artist Emmeline Pidgen, features a cut-out-and-play paper doll on the reverse of the dust jacket – and the element of surprise, fun and wonder is a great way to engage kids and lay the foundations of a lifetime’s love of books.
Below, in no particular order, I’ve listed a few of my current favourites. This is by no means a final, all-time, best-ever list – there must be hundreds of similar books out there I’ve yet to discover, and any recommendations would be very welcome – it’s simply a few that I’ve been enjoying recently, and to make it easier I’ve excluded books with electronics and full-on pop-up books, which would require lists of their own.
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Shapes by Patrick George
With sharp, minimal illustration, Shapes follows the journey of a mysterious red parcel, and includes several clear, plastic pages with a specific shape printed on them. These shapes can be overlaid on either of the pages which surround them to represent different objects – my favourite is the orange circle which, when placed on the left page, becomes the spinning rotor blades of a small aeroplane, while on the right page the shape becomes a setting sun as the plane flies by.
2. There Are Cats In This Book by Viviane Schwarz
A book full of shaped pages and flaps to lift, you can throw wool and pillow-fight with cats, and rescue them from boxes. Great, simple fun – and who doesn’t love cats?
3. Hang Glider & Mud Mask by Brian McMullen & Jason Jagel
From McSweeney’s kids imprint, McMullen’s, this story features a man and a woman who literally meet in the middle. From one end of the book Hang Glider swoops down into Mud Mask’s arms, and from the other we see Mud Mask climb to the top of a building to meet him. The final page from each perspective folds out to become the front cover of its opposite – there is no back cover as such – and effectively creates a never-ending book which your children might insist you read many, many times over.
4. Keep Our Secrets by Jordan Crane
Also from McMullen’s, this board book features a thick black ink that disappears when heat is applied, revealing a cat-filled accordion, a couch-dwelling dog, a sentient kitchen, the man in the moon and much, much more. It’s great fun, although perhaps not ideal at bedtime – it’s best read with a hairdryer in hand, so it’s a pretty noisy event.
5. The Blue Balloon by Mick Inkpen
This Inkpen classic features some of the best examples of fold-outs ever as pages expand outward and upward to brilliantly illustrate the scale of the titular magic balloon’s transformations. Intended for toddlers, my six-year-old son and I still regularly enjoy this, although thanks to some very enthusiastic young hands our copy’s mostly held together with sticky-tape now.
6. Spot Stays Overnight by Eric Hill
Of all the lift-the-flap books for the very young, my favourites are Eric Hill’s timeless and much-loved Spot series. I particularly enjoy the way the flaps hide dialogue and are used to reveal funny secrets – Spot Stays Overnight is best, with Spot having a sleepover at Steve the monkey’s house, the final flap revealing what was in the mysterious bag that Mum brought over.
7. The Pirates Next Door by Jonny Duddle
It only happens once, but Duddle’s immigration satire features a great fold-out toward the end of the story when a two-page spread extends to four to convey the extent of the much-maligned new neighbours’ generosity, and its quiet surprise is very effective.
8. The High Street by Alice Melvin
Sally has a shopping list and ventures down the high street to buy what she needs, stopping at some fantastic, beautifully illustrated and detailed shops. Each shop is on a fold-out page, so can be opened up to follow Sally inside – the pattern is broken later, however, when one of the items on her list can’t be found …
9. Heads by Matthew Van Fleet
A great book for the very young, Van Fleet’s guide to animal heads of all shapes and sizes features hatching duck eggs, floppy ears, a burping hippo, woolly sheep, a sneezing elephant and more, then ends with a big fold-out featuring a whale – even the front cover requires some interaction to reveal the title. This one’s got everything!
10. The Fly by Petr Horácek
This sad tale of the hated fly includes some great shaped pages that work as a swat to hit the insect with before the poor creature finally begs the reader not to close the book and squash him – but most children, of course, will take great delight in doing exactly that.
Which old school interactive books do you love? Tell us childrens.books@theguardian.com or on Twitter @GdnChildrensBks.
- Aidan Moffat’s book The Lavender Blue Dress (which he made with artist Emmeline Pidgen) is available at the Guardian bookshop.
