Review: Look-Alikes (Books for I-spy Loving Children)

The books below were suggested to me quite some time ago by "Mom Unplugged" of Unplug Your Kids, and I thought they would be perfect for entertaining the little guy on a (then) upcoming flight.  I never got around to picking them up until last week.  I am so glad we hunted them down.

Look-Alikes: The More You Look, the More You See! (Hardcover), by Joan Steiner. This book is a great twist on the classic I-spy books. The pages feature amazingly detailed scenes which are made up entirely of tiny objects, repurposed for other use - a piece of bread becomes a bench, a pencil becomes a fencepost, dominoes become steps, etc.  Fun rhyming text highlights one of the items on each page, but the real fun is in staring and staring at the pictures to see what else you can find.  Kidney bean cobblestones, scissor spokes on a ferris wheel, a nacho dress... The back of the book contains extra challenges, as well as a list of all of the "look-alikes" in each scene. There are from 78 to 207 different types of objects in each scene!

Excerpt:

"Come along! Jump aboard! Grab hold of my hand. We're crossing the border into Look-Alike Land. Everything's changing! Believe it or not, It looks like this engine's a huge COFFEEPOT!

Bookworm's interest at 2 years, 1 month: We mainly look at this together and play i-spy with it, with me calling out objects.  It is a little difficult for him, but he likes it nonetheless, with a bit of help. (The I-spy A to Z book he is used to has a picture of the item you are meant to find at the bottom of the page, so he is used to the ease of that system). He'll grow to like it even more, I'm sure.

Look-Alikes Jr. : Find More Than 700 Hidden Everyday Objects (Hardcover), by Joan Steiner.  Like the original Look-Alikes, this Look-Alikes Jr. contains photographs of amazing 3-d structures built from everyday objects.  The Jr. version features larger, simpler text and fewer items per scene (48 to 94 different items). All in all, 700 different objects hide throughout the book.

Excerpt:

"Here's the bedroom and the bathroom as well.  The sink in the bathroom looks like a shell."

Bookworm's interest at 2 years, 1 month: He particularly enjoys the page from the excerpt above.  We play I-spy, quizzing him to find the broccoli tree, dollar bill table, shower curtain made out of flags, etc.  He often needs help finding something the first time, but remembers it for subsequent readings.

Activity Idea

Create your own 3-d scene, photograph it, and play I-spy!

Another I-spyish idea I had recently that I might try next year: My son loves unpacking and hanging the Christmas ornaments, and, like most of us, I tend to have a lot of memories or stories associated with our ornaments.  I thought it would be really fun to take photos of each of my favorite ornaments and create a photo book with a sentence or two about where it came from or its significance.  Then, I could let him play with using the photo book to hunt for the ornaments on the tree.  Or, instead of a photo book, maybe just do the photos of the ornaments and laminate each, with the description on the reverse side. Can you tell someone got a laminator for Christmas?

Questions

Have you read these?  What do you think of them?  Do your kids love I-spy as much as ours?  We play it while we stroll outside all the time.  He also just got the I-spy Christmas book, which belongs in this post, but we haven't read it enough yet to give it a full review.  So you can expect to read about that one here sometime soon.