Press Here, by Hervé Tullet
It’s not exactly fiction, but it’s certainly not non-fiction; it doesn’t have flaps to lift or bunnies to pat. It’s bursting with dots, urges action, and as I write this, it is #5 on the New York Times’ list of best-selling children’s picture books.
It’s called Press Here.
This is a white, square book, around 8×8, made of glossy cardboard pages, and popping with bright fingerpaint dots in fire engine red, sky blue, and canary yellow. These dots
perform dazzling tricks for you, the reader, if you simply follow the directions in the book. Don’t believe me?
On the first page, there is one yellow dot. It’s about the size of a quarter. PRESS HERE AND TURN THE PAGE, say the directions below it. So, you press the dot…and turn the page…and voila!! Now there are two dots! A few pages later, we are instructed to “RUB THE DOT ON THE LEFT…GENTLY.” And…what has happened this time? We brim with curiosity as we turn the page and see…it has turned from yellow to red!! Ridiculously satisfying.
Keep flipping pages and following directions to tap, shake, tilt, press, blow, and clap, and those dots will merrily astound and entertain you! And your child, too. Of course.
This crazy concept book is surprisingly entertaining, and would make an ideal book for a young wiggle-worm. Prepare for gallons of enthusiastic shaking, clapping, and let’s-do-it-again requests. Pack it in your babysitting satchel, haul it along for a long car trip, share it with a child recuperating who needs some bedside fun. Then, invite kids to create their own version.
Here’s the Amazon link: Press Here
orange marmalade 
I feel ridiculously proud that I helped you find this title.
🙂
Wow! How imaginative, without technology – only using a child’s imagination.
I need to find one of these.
[…] daughter, who now works at an indie bookshop in Minneapolis, tells me that Hervé Tullet, author of Press Here, has a jolly title called The Game of Light — a cardboard book full of die-cut shapes from […]