BooksForKidsBlog: Oh, Christmas Tree! <em>I Spy A Christmas Tree</em> by Jean Marzollo and Walter Wick

I SPY A TOP AND A CHRISTMAS TREE.

I SPY TWO BIRDS AND A PRESENT FOR ME!

What's Christmas without a Christmas tree? And what's Christmas without a new I Spy book for the younger set? In their new offering for this season, Jean Marzollo's rhymes and Walter Wick's engaging photo compendia combine to give youngsters' brains an age-appropriate workout. Easy stuff for the middle elementary I SPY expert, but just right for preschoolers just sharpening their visual discrimination skills, this and the Mazollo-Wick team's junior I Spy Christmas books make great pre-Christmas or stocking stuffers.

In this outtake from their earlier captivating volume, I Spy Christmas: A Book of Picture Riddles, the verso (left-hand page) provides Marzollo's rhyming clues and enlarged picture versions of the objects. On the facing page these objects reappear, slyly concealed in the collage of colorful items on the right-hand side, a helpful device which helps kids zero in on the correct objects to be found in the photo. Christmasy items such as tree ornaments are mixed with toys such as race cars and polar bears.

As a bonus treat, like the chocolate kiss in the toe of the stocking, the authors provide an appended craft project which involves matching both sides of preprinted, punch-out ornaments, the picture side and the text side. Minimal adult help is required, but most four- or five-year-old children will be able to match both halves of the text and both halves of the picture to make their own sturdy tree ornaments for their own Christmas trees. For kids who blaze their way through the initial puzzles, there is also an appended picture dictionary of many of the other objects to be found on all of the pictures pages of this little book.