Are Search and Find books the precursor to video/DSi/Wii/Xbox/Nintendo games for little boys? Maybe … but I’ll take that any day over the screens! I have to say that I have never logged in so many hours searching for stuff in books until I had my third child and my only son. Coincidence? I think not. There is a gaming feature that never seems to bore my son from searching and finding stuff in books. This, however, does not seem to translate into searching and finding [lost] stuff in his room or in the house.
I am also going to go out on a literacy limb and claim that I think that searching and finding things (i.e. recognition of shapes) is related to literacy and that recognizing shapes is not too different from recognizing letters and words. I don’t have research to back up my intuition so take this with a huge grain of salt.
That being said, it is fun to search for stuff together. This is another way to get reluctant readers to read. You have to read to figure out what you are searching for, after all!
10 Amazing Seek and Find Picture Books
Look! A Book! by Bob Staake
This is my son’s current obsession. I like it because Staake has cleverly extended the searches in the picture book by adding challenges at the end which require the reader to scour the entire book for each item on the list. Even though we have read this book dozens of times already, the search-the-entire-book challenges keep the book fresh and fun. And we never seem to remember where all the items are, whereas the items to find on each individual page become easy after the second reading. This book also has nice rhyming text and I really like Staake’s illustration style. All in all, this book is a winner!
Picture Puzzler: A Natural History Hide-And-Seek by Ksenia Bakhareva
There are 72 picture riddles about creatures in different habitats around the world to solve in this gorgeously illustrated picture book about our natural world.
Treasure Ship (Can You See What I See) by Walter Wick
The premise of this picture book is clever. Each page is an image within a larger image such that the book zooms out from start to finish. And the photography/photoshop is amazing. And it’s truly difficult to find everything listed on the page. Sometimes the entire family has to get involved to find the last item! The text of this book also rhymes. All 3 of my kids like to read this book so it’s an easy bedtime story with all of us scouring the pages for items that are really hard to find so it’s a really satisfying feeling to complete a page!
Let’s Find Pokémon by Kazukuni Aihara
I am becoming such a Pokémon expert by reading these types of picture books because we have 6 of these. I find the inside cover pages to be helpful because they list all the Pokémon in the book, and I need that because there are more than 500 of those little buggers. When you read this book repeatedly, the pokémon on the page that you are supposed to find becomes too easy to spot so you will need to know the names of the Pokémon in order to find those instead. My son and I take turns asking the other to locate an obscure Pokémon.
The Great Dinosaur Search by Rosie Heywood
This book is dogeared from the hours upon hours we spent searching for dinosaurs and reading the factoids on each page. It’s a wonderful way to visualize the dinosaurs in their natural habitat. I really like this one and I shock myself when I say this because I seriously logged hundreds of hours reading this book with my son when he was three, four, and even five years old. This picture book is perfect for budding paleontologists!
Can You Find It?: Search and Discover More Than 150 Details in 19 Works of Art by Judith Cressy
My oldest daughter liked this seek-and-find picture book when she was little. I’m not sure what happened to it, but I liked looking at the artwork very carefully to notice the minute details that I otherwise wouldn’t see. My eldest is the artist in the family so this would appeal to kids who actually like visiting a museum of fine arts.
Have You Seen My Lunch Box? by Steve Light
Search for the lunch box and other items in this charming board book. [board book, ages 2 and up]
One is Not a Pair: A Spotting Book by Britta Teckentrup
It’s not easy to find the matching pair but that’s the fun of this picture book. [picture book, ages 4 and up]
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My books:
Amazon / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Amazon / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World
- ⭐ Starred review from School Library Journal!
- Junior Library Guild Gold selection
- Massachusetts Book Award Long List
- dPICTUS 100 Outstanding Picture Books of 2023
- Chicago Library’s Best of the Best
- 2023 INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist
- Green Earth Book Award Long List
- Nautilus Silver Winner, Nonfiction Children’s Picture Book
- Imagination Soup’s 35 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 for Kids
Amazon / Barefoot Books / Signed or Inscribed by Me
Amazon / Scholastic / Signed or Inscribed by Me
What a great list! Love your Top 5’s and Top 10’s .. so much useful material for parents.
Just included the Walter Wick books on my shopping list. I have one of the Usborne The Great Search books.. smashing as well.
Read Aloud Dad
To Read Aloud Dad,
Thank you so much. We just read the Christmas Walter Wick book last night and it was still hard to find all the stuff. We read Look a Book the night before and it’s charming us though my son is now fast at finding the objects mentioned in the text. Still fun though!