Fold-a-Flap: Shapes

by Philip Giordano (Illustrator)

Circles, diamonds, triangles, and more! Lift the flaps to find out more about the basic shapes. Children will soon become stars at identifying shapes!

Genres: Childrens

Board Book

Published April 4, 2017

About the author

Born in 1980 in a small coastal town in Liguria, Italy, to a Filipina mother and Swiss father, Philip Giordano is a tireless globetrotter, who now lives and works in Tokyo. After studying at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and at the European Institute of Design, he earned a Master in Animation in Turin. He works for a number of magazines and publishing houses around the world, illustrating book covers, designing toys, and creating children's books and animations.

Reviews

[☼Pam Might Read Too Much ☼ · Rating 5 out of 5]

~ Review copy

I really liked Philip Giordano's NUMBERS boardbook, but I love this SHAPES book.

First I adore the shapes he has chosen, and secondly I love that he has taken the whole topic to a new level by combing shapes to make new things. This makes it very easy for us to transition from reading this little boardbook to doing an art project that uses shapes.

WHAT YOU GET is a sturdy little boardbook with slick pages. I happen to like slick pages because it makes easier to remove drool and any stickiness that may come with use.

You can start older babies off with using this book by pointing out and naming colors and shapes, animals and activities. There are a couple of caterpillars that are shown, for example, as well as a snail, cow, birds, fish and shark. In addition there are figures, such as a snowman, and people engaged in a variety of activities. Examples would include an artist who is painting, and a sailor in a boat.

For toddlers and preschoolers you can reinforce their understanding of shapes and use the book as a jumping off point for noticing the shapes around us, and for how shapes combine to make things. One example for a rectangle is a child eating a candy bar. And the author shows us how circles and a triangle make a snowman.

~
For a boardbook SHAPES has a lot of good things going on. There is eye hand manipulation practice, colors and shapes to point out, as well as activities and objects to name.

I love the shapes that the author has chosen. Circle, square, rectangle and triangle we would expect. But he also has chosen star, spiral, heart, diamond, raindrop, and rosette. Using the flaps he demonstrates how we might find them around us. The triangle opens up into a sailboat with a sailor. The raindrop opens up into a field of raindrops falling from a cloud.

Giordano takes this one step further by putting together 3 triangles to make a tree. And it's from here where you can take your own shapes and work on an art project which combines them in different ways.

Very nice series of boardbooks.