A board-style picture book for very young children, built around the idea of opposites. Each page is made to fold, and the fold is the point: opened out it shows one thing, folded over it shows another, so the pair is discovered by the child's own hand rather than simply read off the page. It belongs to a series of fold-and-flap books made for small children, and the publisher credits the material to Dolphine Press.
What it sets out to teach is basic vocabulary for opposites — the first set of contrasting words a child meets. The handling element is deliberate: because there is something to do on every page, small children tend to stay with it longer than with a flat picture book. It suits the age when a child is being read to and is beginning to recognise words, and it works as well on a lap as on a nursery floor.
Buyers outside Sri Lanka should know this is not an English-only book. It is catalogued as a Sinhala-English title, with Sinhala text appearing alongside the English; the publisher's own description of the book also lists Tamil among the languages included. For a household raising a child in Sinhala and English, or for families abroad keeping a Sri Lankan language alive at home, that pairing is the reason to choose it. For a reader who wants English alone, it is not the right book.
It is published in Colombo by M. D. Gunasena & Co. (Pvt) Ltd, a long-established Sri Lankan publisher and bookseller working in Sinhala and English, with a substantial list of children's and educational titles.
- Author: Dolphine Press
- Publisher: M. D. Gunasena & Co. (Pvt) Ltd
- Language: Sinhala-English
- ISBN: 9789552128677
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