Busy Farm : Engineered Book

The Busy Farm Book by Fisher Price for Little People provides coordinating animal sounds to go along with the text. The main character is Farmer Jed and the book follows is day on the farm. On the right hand side of the book is a menu with buttons with animal pictures on them. While going through the story, the reader is suppose to hit the buttons for the different animals Jed encounters to hear the sounds they make. The reader is asked what sound that animal makes before the hit the button. It is slightly amusing to hit the buttons and have the animal sounds produced, but it does nothing beneficial for the book.

The illustrations of this book are very plain and unattractive when in comparison to other forms of children's books illustrations I have reviewed. The text is of poor quality as well. While this is a book for very young children, The only two things I see this book being beneficial for is working on left to right progression by turn the pages and fine motor development by pushing the buttons and turning the pages. This would be a good introduction of literacy for infants and toddlers, but even in those circumstances, I would not consider this a good book. Even though it does work on animal sounds and recognition, there are many other activities that can be done to teach the same thing and that are more interactive that this book.

Fisher Price Busy Farm (2000).