Beautiful Rainbow World-An Invitation to Read

Following along with  Nurture Store's Simple play:: complex learning series today I'd like to share with you a very special book and how I introduced my girls to it.

Before I go any further, I'd just like to thank Daria Marmaluk-Hajioannou for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for sharing it with you. Everything I'm about to say is my own opinion and I didn't receive any other compensation.

How I introduced the girls to Beautiful Rainbow
When introducing Bubbles and Squiggles to new books I like to set up what I call an invitation to read. Basically it has the same premise as an invitation to play but features a book.


To introduce the girls to Beautiful Rainbow World I decided to display the book on their light table along with a few things to support their understanding of the book-a few pom poms, some felt shapes, Squiggles' wooden rainbow and a few Little People. I also downloaded the song (free with the book) and had it playing in the background.

Bubbles was not interested at all but Squiggles was quite excited to play with the loose parts and little people and when I offered to read her the book she immediately sat in my lap. Rather than read the book I chose to sing it and that has set the tone for every 'reading' since-anyone who attempts to simply read the book to the girls gets told off.

As I sang the book to Squiggles she was facinated with the pictures, pointing to them and describing things, such as 'bubbles!' and 'bubba!' or asking, 'who's that?' I thought Bubbles was completely ignoring us however 15 minutes after Squiggles had lost interest, I observed Bubbles dancing in circles and singing, 'Beautiful rainbow, beautiful rainbow, beautiful rainbow world' I offered to read the book with her and ended up reading, re-reading and re-reading the book again for the rest of the day! In fact, I've been singing/reading the book at least once a day for the last three months!

The Review
Beautiful Rainbow World was created by Suzee Ramirez and Lynne Raspet. The book is full of beautiful, moving, images set along to an extended version of Daria's song Beautiful Rainbow World. In the three months we've owned this book it has become a favourite not just with Bubbles and Squiggles but also myself.

I was so worried when I signed up to review the book that it would be tokenistic but it is anything but. You can see a preview and listen to Daria's song here:

My words are just not enough to tell you how much I love this book. Squiggles' limited vocabulary now includes the words "beautiful rainbow" and she can quite often be seen sitting on her bed with the book "singing" to herself. I even took the book on placement with me where my two and three year olds all became enraptured with it-pointing to different pictures and declaring, "that's me!"

For more fantastic simple play jump on over to Nurture Store:


Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.  You know you're infant/child best, use your own judgement-considering your infant/child's temperament, habits, behaviour and development before you play with a new play medium.