I Spy Little Animals by Jean Marzollo, Walter Wick (1998, Hardcover, Board)

These board books are a smaller and simpler version of the original "I Spy" series. If you are not familiar with the "I Spy" series, the basic concept is similar to "Where's Waldo" in that you "search" for specific objects. But in this case, the searching field is a series of photographs that depict varied and interesting items. Each photograph has a particular theme and is full of colorful and inventive objects.
The original "I Spy" books ask you to find many objects in each photo and can be very challenging. My husband and I got a kick out of finding the objects ourselves and by no means breezed through the books. These simplified board books are geared toward a much younger audience--they offer toddlers and younger children a way to play the same type of game. The photographs contain only a handful of objects, and the reader is asked to find only two objects per page.

My daughter really enjoys these types of interactive books. They give her a chance to be "proud" when she finds whatever she's looking for. There is also a similar series I would recommend called "Find the Duck (Puppy, Piglet, Kitten, Teddy)..." books. In the "Find the..." series the child is looking for the same object throughout the book. . If you are interested, I wrote a review on that series where I go into more detail about them.

Overall, these are a nice way to interact with your toddler--they offer an opportunity to teach patience and to carefully investigate things. My only criticism is that I noticed that the photos that they use are just blown up portions of photos taken from their original series. I wish they would be more creative and use entirely new photos.