October 5th is Usborne Day – a day of activities to celebrate 40 years of Usborne Books. Started by Peter Usborne in 1973, Usborne books (and the little yellow duck) are known and loved worldwide. We’d like to share some of our favourites.
My daughter has grown up with the stories about Mrs Boot and Appletree Farm in The Complete Book of Farmyard Tales. The CD is still one of the most requested during long car journeys!
My daughter is just learning to tell the time so she was very excited to find that she can learn with Poppy and Sam from Appletree Farm.
I bought The Usborne Nursery Rhyme Songbook when I was looking for a book of traditional nursery rhymes. This lovely collection also has an accompanying CD and sheet music.
We had several of the That’s Not My…. touch and feel board books for my daughter when she was younger and they’ve all just re-emerged from storage so that she can ‘read’ them to her dolls! Favourites included That’s Not My Snowman and That’s Not My Teddy but for our transport obsessed toddler the favourite was definitely That’s Not My Car!
Usborne has simplified traditional stories such as The Secret Garden and The Wind in the Willows in their range of classic picture books. It is fantastic that children (and adults) can be exposed to simplified versions of the stories.
I buy a new Sticker Dolly Dressing book whenever we travel. As well as being fun to do they provide lots of learning opportunities. The latest sticker book that we bought was Sticker Dolly Dressing Costumes around the World which stimulated a geography discussion and gave us an opportunity to get the globe out and find out where all the characters came from.
Some of The Usborne Sticker Dolly Dressing Books are also available as iPad apps.
Usborne First Picture Maths is a sturdy board book which pictorially introduces children to numbers, counting, addition, subtraction and other basic mathematical terms. It’s colourful, attractive pictures make this a lovely book to introduce mathematical language to young children.
Congratulations to Usborne for forty years of publishing great books!
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