Read, Read, Read, said the Baby: Paper Peek Colors by Chihiro Takeuchi

One of the things that has changed for me during the pandemic is that our delivery between libraries is shut down. I used to request a lot of materials from the bigger libraries in our consortium (or the more daring ones) to decide if I wanted to purchase them or not. Now I'm saving some in a list and others I've just bought myself to look at. This is one I purchased myself, since it wasn't available.

This appears to be the first in a series called Paper Peek, with this first one focusing on colors. The first spread shows a patterned white background (it looks a little like a towel) with the text on the left side and a die-cut shape, showing a patterned color, on the right. The first spread says "Green Leaf" on the left and a leaf shape is cut out on the right to show a green pattern. When you turn the page, the left side shows the original label inside the die cut with different things to find around the outside of the shape while the right is completely covered in color with blended images in the background. For the leaf, the colored page is pale green with darker green pea pods, crocodiles, leaves, and more spread across it. Readers are challenged to find a dinosaur, two turtles, three snakes, four frogs, and five crocodiles. Each spread continues this way with a red apple, white cloud, black cat, yellow duck, brown bear, pink flower, orange pumpkin, and blue water droplet. The final spread shows a mix of different colored images from the book on a white background.

The small images all look like paper punches, each one is intricate and detailed but they all match exactly. A wide variety of shades are used in the pictures to differentiate the images from each other. The thing is, while this is cool and a fun way to learn shapes, colors, and seek-and-find, it's really not a good choice for an actual baby or most toddlers. The images are too small and the many different hues will be confusing to little ones whose eyes are not fully developed. It takes time for babies' vision and color sense to mature, hence why most board books are high-contrast and in simple tones.

Verdict: While this isn't the best choice for a baby or most toddlers, it will be a fun book for a preschool to play with. It's a little expensive for a board book, but if you have a large audience of preschoolers willing to dive into your board book collection, worth the cost.

ISBN: 9781536211481; Published 2019 by Candlewick Studio; Purchased myself and donated to the library