High Contrast books were our son's favorite books for about the first four months of his life. But as his eyesight improved my husband and I move onto other books. After all, we were a bit sick of looking at the same simple black and white pictures with one word per page. So when our son started to show interest in other books we were more than happy to put those books aside to accommodate his changing tastes. However, three weeks ago I pulled out one of his high contrast books to move into our family room for the week. (We keep most of his books in his room, but actually do most of our reading in the family room so I pull a fresh selection of books to move from the nursery to the family room each Sunday.) It wasn't that I thought he'd be that interested in the book, it's just that we hadn't read it in awhile and I like to pull a new selection of books each week. Well, imagine my surprise when he loved the high contrast book. I pulled it out to read and he was captivated. His eyes were focused on the page, and his hands were involved too. He kept slapping the pages, not really pointing at different things but just reaching out to touch all over each page. I truly hadn't seem him that excited about a book in ages! I was shocked. I thought he'd be mildly interested, but mostly just board with the overly simple black and white drawings. Boy was I wrong! I thought maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe he was just excited because he hadn't been read that book in about three months. So, I pulled it out the next day too, curious to see if his interest would still be high, and it sure was. There, for the second day in a row, was excited exuberance to look at the pages of this book. I told my husband about the unexpected response when he arrived home from work and he sat down to read the book with our son and even though we'd just looked at the book about an hour ago, he put on the same display of enthusiasm with my husband that he did for me. Needless to say, we learned our lesson. A seven month old is not too old for high contrast books. We'll be sure to keep our three high contrast books in our regular rotation, at least as long as our son's enthusiasm lasts.
Just in case you'd like to get your hands on some high contrast books, here are a few titles. The first three we own and love. The last three we just check out of the library.
- Fish and Canoe by Flying Frog Publications
- Me and You by Flying Frog Publications
- Sock and Shoe by Flying Frog Publications
- Cluck and Moo by Flying Frog Publications
- Look Look by Peter Linenthal
- Hello Bugs! By Smriti Prasadam
