Shapes are endlessly fascinating to babies and toddlers as they gradually learn to recognize each one and discover where it is found. This book will encourage young children to spot all the different shapes in the world around them, from square books (like this one!) and circular plates to triangular cheese wedges and cylindrical food cans. The straightforward text encourages reading skills and interactive questioning - what shape is a ball, can you see all the shapes that have been put together to make a picture, and what is a star-shaped sea creature called? This first words and picture book will delight and inform early learners, who will love looking at it, either with a grown-up or by themselves. Compiled with the advice of educational specialists, this special padded boardbook combines lively, simple text with bold, bright photographs to promote the development of literacy skills. Experts agree that preschool children respond more immediately to photographs than to illustrations, and this book is full of lively pictures of shapes that youngsters will encounter in the real world. The images are carefully arranged into visual and subject groups, beginning with simple two-dimensional squares, circles, triangles, rectangles, ovals, hearts and stars, before moving on to solid shapes (including a sphere, a cube, a pyramid, cylinders and a cone) and shapes found in nature. This will encourage young readers to make connections, and to notice how various things develop and work together.