Aliki
Greenwillow Books (2010)
ISBN 9780061673085
Reviewed by Madison (age 4) and Hailey (age 2) Schlarman and Mom for Reader Views (04/10)
“Push Button” is about a little boy who, like most kids, loves to push buttons to see what happens! When his finger gets tired he explores the pages of books to use his very active imagination and take his turn trying new things.
Madison: “It was great. It was about buttons and all the things that have buttons.”
Hailey: Squirmed the entire time, got off the couch as soon as possible and walked away. Later she came back to look at the pictures. She would not comment on the book.
Mom: This book was colorful and had cute illustrations; however they were a little overwhelming. It was hard to read this book to my children with so much going on across every page. I breathed a sigh of relief when I came to a page with one simple picture. On page 9- 10, the author talks about a vacuum, water faucet, and a car. Having a background in marketing, it is common knowledge that people read left to right and top to bottom. This naturally led my eyes to read “Push button roar, clean the floor. Push button vroom, car goes zoom.” However, the zoom goes across both pages 9 & 10 which made me almost miss the “push button, squirt” and have to refocus to read it.
While the book looked interesting from the cover, it was more of a disappointment to me. My two-year-old wasn’t interested. My four-year-old who always rates everything by the amount of times she repeats the word, basically gave this book a one-star great. Her tone said, “Thanks so much for reading to me mommy, but can we move on?” Neither of my children asked me to read this book again. As a parent, I personally don’t want my kids to touch each and every button. I feel the book sends the message of exploration and touching and pushing buttons, when there are quite a few that should not ever be touched by little hands. If I had seen this book on a shelf in the store, I would have been intrigued to pick it up, just as I was intrigued to review it. I would have scanned it in the aisle as most parents do, and put it back. I would not have paid $16.99 for this book.
While I commend the author on her idea, I must be honest. I feel the little boy could have used a name. I feel “Push Button” could have gone in a little bit different of a direction, maybe with a mom who didn’t let her child touch each and every button. I also commend the illustrator, who did a wonderful job with the drawings and color, but just used too much of it. It was overwhelming and hard to read. While my kids enjoyed small parts of this book, it overall was not something I would keep as part of our collection.
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