Busy Buddies: Silly Stuff That Goes Together

Forks and knives, hammers and nails, and needles and thread are examples of things that go together and they are among the many pairs of buddies found in this board book for kids, Busy Buddies. The book is all about associations and it attempts to teach young children about the types of things that go together in some specific way. Busy Buddies devotes most of its pages to identifying the different items that go together. There is no lengthy explanation about the illustration on each page. The only words stated on each page are the names of the two items, connected with the word `and' in the middle. The exception is the first set of pages. Here, the brush is anxious to find her buddy and the author included a brief explanation about what was taking place. The book ends with all of the buddies mentioned in the book joining together on the final two pages as the brush and comb are united. Teaching kids about things that go together is the main idea of this book, but Busy Buddies also teaches kids about different greetings, with a unique greeting message for each of the pairs of buddies. Each pair of objects has some type of greeting, ranging from a simple hello to a foreign word like bonjour. This lets little kids understand the different ways that people greet each other. The illustrations in this book are nice and they contribute to the overall enjoyment for young people who read this book. Each object is drawn and painted in different colors and all of the objects feature arms, legs, and smiling faces. The book is all about friendship and fun between two different things that go together, so it makes sense that every object would be presented in a happy, friendly, inviting way. Overall, Busy Buddies is a good board book for youngsters that helps kids learn what goes together, along with the side benefit of learning different ways to greet people. It makes a good choice for those times when you want a book that offers a simple lesson but that includes illustrations that are interesting enough and colorful enough to grab and hold most children's attention.

I am not sure why our toddler likes this book so much - it seems silly and simple to my husband and me - but we borrowed it from the library a week ago and he cannot get enough of it! He will bring us the book several times throughout the day and ask us to read it to him. It is a good way to learn a very simple concept - a pencil works with paper, etc. - with about four words per page. Seems to be a big hit!