I Spy a Car Guy! Can You See What I See? Trucks and Cars

If your car-loving kid has already graduated from the I Spy Little Learning Box, a set of three I Spy Little Board Books, here's a natural follow-up for the preschool automobile buff. Walter Wicks' Can You See What I See? Trucks and Cars continues the fine photographic work that Wicks contributed to the wildly popular I Spy series authored for older readers by Jean Marzolo.

Trucks and Cars continues Wicks' Can You See What I See? series with a challenge to preschoolers to zoom in on each page and identify a specific truck ("a truck with a duck") from a page of cars and trucks of all colors and sizes. It's a fun way to sharpen observation skills and works with an adult reader or, after a few run-throughs, as a read-alone book.

Other books in this series which appeal to this age group are Can You See What I See? Dinosaurs, which in addition to teaching dinosaur names, doubles as a concept book teaching up and down, opposites, and size, and Can You See What I See? Seymour Makes New Friends, in which Seymour uses such art supplies as pipe cleaners, beads, craft sticks, and blocks, to make two bunnies on a see-saw. If preschoolers are eager to try out their own craft ideas, directions for at-home craft projects are appended.

For somewhat older kids, there's Can You See What I See? Once Upon a Time, in which rhyming text challenges the reader to find objects in tableaux from well-known fairy tales such as Cinderella or Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

All of these books are excellent as a way to foster focus and lengthen attention span in the preschool years, but the best reason to read them is that they are just so much fun--fun when new for the thrill of discovery and fun when they're familiar for the satisfaction of finding things right where they are supposed to be!