Through the Looking Glass Children's Book Reviews

Moving Blocks

Moving Blocks

Yusuke Yonezu
Novelty Board Book
For infants to age 3
Minedition, 2015   ISBN: 978-9888240708

Many little children will happily play with a set of wooden or plastic building blocks for hours on end. Castles, cars, houses, bridges, towers and many other things appear and then, when the building blocks are knocked over, disappear.

In this board book little children will encounter a bookish set of building blocks. Painted red, yellow, green and blue the blocks are rectangular, square, round, triangular and form arches. When we open the book we see some blocks that have been stacked up so that look rather like a wall. There are two die-cut holes in the wall on the left hand side that we can see through. We are asked “What are you building?” and when we turn the page we discover that the second page has a die-cut car shape in it and there on the next spread is a car that goes “Beep, beep!”

When we turn the page again we are back at the wall of bricks. We now know that there is a die-cut image on the second page of the wall, but we cannot be sure what the blocks have been turned into. Perhaps it is another car. When we turn the page we see that the blocks were used to make a bus.

As they continue to explore this novelty board book, children are going to enjoy trying to figure out what the blocks will be used to build next. Eagerly they will turn the pages to marvel at the way in which the die-cut spaces and the brick walls combine to create a new building block creation.