Touchthinklearn

Touchthinklearn

Title: A B C

Series Name: Touchthinklearn

ISBN: 9781452145037

Author/Illustrator: Xavier Deneux

Publisher: Chronicle Books Lic

Publication Date: 09/06/2016

Audience: Ages 5 - 6

Awards: n/a

Our library's Technical Services Manager will no longer catalog board books as nonfiction, even if they are assigned a Dewey Decimal Number. This must be somewhat of a professional debate also. Baker & Taylor, where we purchase the majority of our books, assigns these books a DDN, yet they are assigned a BISAC Subject of Fiction.

The books in the Touchthinklearn series that are assigned Dewey Decimal Numbers are exceptional concept books for toddlers. The cutouts and raised shapes as well as the bright colors and uncluttered pages make them interesting and enticing to toddlers. The titles that are assigned DDNs are: 

• ABC
• Shapes
• Numbers
• Opposites
• Colors

Deneux has also written many other concept books in this series which are not assigned DDNs. They include:

• Vehicles
• Farm
• Homes
• Baby Animals
• Little Critters
• Wild Animals
• Fly

Opposites  received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly:

PW Reviews 2013 August #1

Deneaux brings a pared-down aesthetic and a subtle tactile dimension to this stylish exploration of opposites. Glued-on cardboard pieces on the left-hand pages dovetail neatly with recessed shapes on the right. “High” is represented by a cat atop a ladder, while “Low” uses the ladder’s skinny rectangular shape to show a mole peering up from the bottom of a hole. A “Heavy” (and cute) gray elephant echoes the shape of the “Light” cloud opposite. Fun for fingers, eyes, and minds. Available simultaneously: Colors. Ages 3–up. (Aug.)

[Page ]. Copyright 2013 PWxyz LLC

Colors and Opposites received this review from Kirkus:

Kirkus Reviews 2014 January #1
A bold, graphic and tactile introduction to colors. On the thicker-than-normal board pages, part of the page is cut away to create a shaped indentation. Glued to the facing page is part or all of the positive space that was cut from the other side. On the first spread, a red, raised apple is fixed to the left-hand page. The right side features the inside of the apple, which is evoked by the apple-shaped indentation with two seeds floating in the center. This inventive format works its way through the other hues, one of the most clever being a blue submarine paired with a submarine-shaped, white whale indentation. The minimal text simply labels one color per page. The last double-page spread features a collection of balloons that mesh with an artist's palette on the facing page as the text asks, "So many colors! Which one is your favorite?" Using strong shades and solid and white backgrounds, Deneux's style is clean, clear and graphically appealing. The companion title, Opposites (978-1-4521-1725-6), uses the same format, but the technique of matching negative and positive space is even more apropos here. Prime examples are the "empty" and "full" fishbowl and the "heavy" elephant paired with a "light" elephant-shaped cloud. Compromising the usefulness of both titles is the legal warning on the back of both books that states that it is not for children under 3. This is a shame, as the mix of graphic simplicity and innovative tactile format would have made both of these delightful additions to the board-book canon; as it is, they represent choke hazards to babies and toddlers, who would most benefit from them. (Board book. 3-4) Copyright Kirkus 2013 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved. 

I admit that these titles come with a choking warning for children under 3, their intended audience. I have these titles in my collection. They have a very sturdy construction which several staff managers put to the test before we decided to add them. We were satisfied that they would stand up to repeated circulation. They have not disappointed us.