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Years ago I went to a convention and was introduced to Usbourne Books, high quality children’s books that are generally only available through home parties and independent sales consultants. Recently my son’s school had an Usbourne Book fundraiser through Wonderfun Books and portions of the proceeds were donated back to his daycare so the school could pick additional books for the classrooms. These are the type of fundraisers I like, I personally don’t need any more wrapping paper or candles, so it was a great excuse to purchase Gavin an educational book.

At the fundraiser I bought Gavin the book, “The Big Book of Big Machines” for $14.99. This oversized book with several fold out pages offered a lot of content and facts about all sorts of  unique machines. Each time we read it Gavin points out different features he wants me to tell him about, which is nice because there’s so much content included in it, it feels as if we are reading a new book every time.

We also had the opportunity to review the Usbourne Phonics Reader series, specifically, Toad Makes a Road. One thing I always have trouble with at school is helping children effectively sound out words they are writing, given that it’s been more than 25 years since I learned the rules of phonics. All of the words are written out by phonemes on the back cover of the book so parents can confidently help their children break down the words while they are learning to read. The pages are pretty durable, the illustrations are great, and the stories are basic but cute .

One of my favorite Usbourne features is that in some of the series of books there is a little yellow duck who hides on each page.  Children like my son, who are too young to learn to read will take pride in finding the duck everytime.

Wonderfun books provided the Toad Makes A Road book free to facilitate this review. Otherwise I have purchased at least 4 Usbourne books independently. The opinions are my own.