by Eleanor O'Donnell

Created on: September 01, 2009

That's Not My Dinosaur is an Usborne touchy-feely book that was written by Fiona Watt, and illustrated by Rachel Wells. It comes in a neat little square shaped hard-backed format that is ideal for little hands to hold and manage, with or without adult support. The pages are all glossy with a wipe-clean finish, so any grubby marks left from all the touching and feeling can be easily wiped away. There are loads of board books out there on the market, and many are available for half the price of the books from this series; but few have durability and a baby-friendly format as good as these.

That's Not My Dinosaur is a very simple story that we're led through by a little mouse. He's looking up at a variety of different dinosaurs and telling us "That's not my dinosaur..." and then he tells us why it isn't for each new dinosaur. The dinosaur on the front cover isn't the right dinosaur because "its body is too squashy" for example. Little hands can have a feel of the squashy dinosaur's body to ascertain exactly what 'squashy' feels like.

This touchy-feely nature is not only fabulous for babies, but of course for special needs children with sensory difficulties as well. On every page there is a different textured panel to feel, and it's placed in different areas on every page too. The only thing I'm not so keen on with this series as a whole is that a lot of the touchy-feely panels are very similar in a lot of the books. 'Squashy', 'bumpy' and 'rough' seem to appear rather frequently throughout the series. It would be nice to find a few more differences between the various books than just the subject content changing. Other books in the series include things like 'That's Not My Teddy' and 'That's Not My Lion' which obviously run along extremely similar lines.

The illustrations in this book are thoroughly enjoyable for younger children. The book makes excellent use of bright, bold colours that are appealing and very eye-catching throughout. The dinosaurs are all friendly fellows with big smiles that welcome little ones into their world too.

This book is as ideal as any from the series for a baby's first book. The recommended age range is around nine months of age through to two or three years old. I bought the first book from this series for my son when he was six months old and he's never looked back. He went onto become an early reader and a firm lover of books; I'm sure in part has been as a result of his early introduction to fun, brightly coloured and good quality interactive books including "That's Not My Dinosaur". I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to any parent of an under two, or to a parent of a child with sensory difficulties.

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