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The Ladybird, Cats, The Egg, Trees, Fruit, Vegetables, Weather and Colour
by S Matthews, Moonlight Books, pp 32, 5.99 Pounds.

Parents exhausted evading their youngsters’ infernal, unending questions
will be tempted, after skimming Moonlight’s excellent new translations of
the French First Discovery series from Gallimard Jeunesse, to lock their
children up with them until they can fully comprehend them.

In creating a series so compelling to young minds the publishers intend
that the six books of the series introduce readers from three to six years
old to basic facts about their world. However, where many children’s early
science books gloss over difficult concepts, First Discovery makes them
its mainstay.

Each book begins with a question. Fruit presents the child with a delicious
illustration of an apple and asks: ‘Do you like eating apples?’ Then it
leapfrogs the reader into some degree of abstraction, for example, varieties
of apples. In each book several illustrations are part of an overlay, under
which you discover cutaways, such as an apple showing its pips, that lead
to further revelations.

These overlays are a major feature, and a successful alternative to
the prevalent use of ‘pop-ups’ to bring energy to a subject, mimicking the
actual process of opening up and examining something. The clarity and realism
of the illustrations and the laconic factuality of the text invite the child
to stretch his or her powers of abstract thought, to the point where, as
I found with my own three-year-old daughter, their struggles with the material
frequently lead to silent absorption.

With repeated reading, the child can soak up a great deal of information
and build up a detailed knowledge of cats, eggs and more. The ideal age
group for these books, would have to be four to six, but younger children
will get much out of them.

As with The Ladybird, the outstanding volume in the series, the books
tend to begin with a sharp, familiar focus, then, having hooked the child’s
attention, make detours to varieties of beetles, the feeding habits of the
ladybird’s predators and, finally, the anatomy of insects in general. To
make the drier facts more platable, the books carefully balance facts with
frivolous hooks. So in Vegetables, there is a comic carrot ‘car’ that makes
the material fun, and also introduces a short section on gardening, just
as Trees deals with woodpeckers and wood products while revolving largely
around the growth of the familiar conker.

In Cats, this formula is doubly successful because, since most small
children’s working knowledge of cats is relatively superficial, it creates
in their mind a whole new appreciation of the complexity of an animal they
have previously seen in an understandably simplistic light. It is quite
captivating for a child to grasp how cats’ claws work and how they show
their differing moods by body movement. The bold full-page pictures of big
cats let the child appreciate the subject at full face value.

Weather has evocative overlays of fog, snow and rain that are quite
superb. Colour explores primary colours found in everything from ice cream
to chameleons.

The Egg has overlays showing the egg inside the hen, and then the embryonic
chick inside the egg itself. It aids broaching the sometimes difficult subject
of reproduction without sacrificing realism. Having said that, my own embarrassment
at having to explain an illustration of ladybirds mating is an indication
of the hazards of these wonderful books!

Jeremy Clarke is a musician and writer. Fourth Estate published his
God is Love (Get it in Writing) last year.