Synopsis:‘You’ll need a grown-up’s help to play this magical light-game. In the dark, use your torch to make flowers bloom on the ceiling and fish swim across the walls!’ This useful note on the back cover explains the aim of of this board book. From each page, various simple shapes (stars, moon, sun, boat, flowers, sea, fish, house, tree, cars and people) have been cut away. Through these holes, light can be shone in order to project images onto a plain surface.

Review: One hopes that this board book will not be overlooked as only appealing to toddlers. The sturdy pages with rounded corners would indeed be quite safe for very small hands, although they might suffer once those hands had been poked through some of the larger holes. However, with a little imagination, this book could equally appeal to older children. In fact, it is almost misleading to describe this object as a book. Yes, one can turn the eight colourful pages and admire the pattern of negative shapes cut from simple, painted backgrounds. One can even read the sparse text on each page, but that only serves to indicate a more interesting use for this imaginative toy.

 ‘In the day time everything is colourful…but at night, if you switch off the light…’ A dark room and a torch, of course, are essential. Then some trial and error is to be expected, as the pages must be held well open, and the light source and the image hole held at the correct distance from each other, and from the ceiling or wall, in order to obtain a sharp image. There may be some interest in the size of the projected image relative to that of the cut-out, and for older children, these issues might even prompt a discussion on the physics of light. Depending on the age and motivation of the child, the temporary patterns on the wall may be entertaining enough in their own right, or they could be used to trace around and paint, giving more permanent decorations.

For some children, this novelty book might also be used to encourage story-telling. The general nature of the shapes means that they could be employed to tell any number of stories. Older children could be encouraged to make up their own narratives, and tell them in conjunction with the light images. One can imagine children of any age being delighted by the novelty of telling a story in the dark with only a torch to give form to ideas. The final page depicting a smiling face seems to imply that the stories can end happily, but children might even be inspired to cut out templates of their own to provide new shapes for further stories.

2008-04-30