Leslie Valdes

Time Machine... back in time
Book is colorful, but lacks read-aloud-ability, July 15, 2004

We love Dora, but these Simon SpotlightNick Jr. books lack read-aloud-ability.

Since my daughter and son are 4 and 2-years respectively, they love Dora and Boots, and I have bought several of these little books but always with pretty much the same experience: I have to invent parts of the storyline and/or ignore some of it. For example, in this book the crew comes upon a ladder with no rungs. Like in the television version the rungs are hidden in the forest and need to be found and counted. No problem. However rather than showing Diego, Dora and Boots climbing the ladder after their successfully reconstructing it, we are shown two pages of them sliding down a zip cord. For young kids this is a discontinuity. They need to see them climb the completed ladder. It is a stupid bit of editing in my humble opinion.

There are other examples of similar unreadability and my advice is to get these at the library, or if you must own, we really like Little Star.… (more)

My two year old has recently discovered Dora and Diego programs on television, and was thrilled to find this book on our bookshelf. This book seems to be based on an episode introducing Diego into Dora's world, and follows the same, if simplified, format, with a quest, the map and backpack, and Swiper the fox, and the same kind of interactions.

My two year old loves the book, and keeps asking me to re-read it. He happily makes all the noises and does all the actions as the story goes along. And then asks me to start again, when we get to the end.… (more)