Usborne Books

Around here, we love Usborne Books.  We have a broad variety of titles about several different subjects: dinosaurs, space, early science, french vocabulary, dictionaries, general knowledge books….we love them all.  Bud loves them for the bite-sized pieces of information about his favorite topics (the space book actually fell apart because he read it so much), and Monkey love the fiction stories and the pictures. 

These books are fantastic, and there are so many of them- literally thousands of titles.  I have bought several of them at used book stores in new condition and they have become quick favorites.  The illustrations and images are wonderful- some are drawn more like cartoons, but they are accurate to the subject they are discussing.  My four year-old can read them, but they are also so interesting the Hockey Guy and I have been known to pick them up and start reading.   There are books designed for babies right up through young teens.

They are absolutely full of information. 

Seriously- I sit down with one of these books and all you’ll hear from me for awhile is, “Huh. I didn’t know that.”  It’s amazing what I have discovered that I don’t know.

Bud has been known to sit down for an hour or more with The Usborne First Book of Knowledge and just read.  I always know when he’s been reading it a lot because suddenly he’ll surprise me with new bits of information throughout the day.

For example- this is an actual conversation I had with Bud one day.

“Mom.  Does our car have deep tread tires?”

“Um… what? Does our car have what?”

“Deep tread tires?  You use them for going over rocks and sand.”

“Ummm…well….do we go over rocks and sand?”

“No.  We go on the road.  Big machines like diggers and bulldozers have deep tread tires so they can go over rocks and sand.  Your car has regular tires.”

“Ummm….right.”

Another day he told me all about magma and the different layers of the Earth.  Another time he was telling me the names of one of the planet’s moons (I can’t remember which planet it was).  He also told me how Legos are made and about the water cycle.  He was really into the streams and rivers section for awhile there.  One day he picked up the Usborne First Dictionary and read it for awhile. 

Yes, my four year old reads the dictionary for fun.  He also taught himself how to sing O, Canada! by looking it up in the encyclopedia.  No one has ever claimed he was normal. 

So anyway, these books are excellent.  My kids fight over them- they are that good.  The prices are reasonable, especially if you shop around (psst- Amazon has them at good prices!)

We’ve invested in a few new titles for Christmas gifts.  My biggest problem buying them was I couldn’t narrow it down to just a few titles to pick.  We want them all.

~ by Krista on November 18, 2008.