One of my happiest childhood moments was when I got lost in books. After having a child, children’s books made me feel like I was reborn as a child, too.
One of the most requested books in our household is In the Town All Year Round by Sussane Berner Rotraut. This was my first exposure to wimmelbooks, a special form of picture books with hidden objects. Dozens of small everyday scenes are represented within one image. Every page has something new to discover, adding to the excitement.
It is extremely rare to give the same book, In the Town All Year Round, to an 18-month-year-old, 4-year-old, or 30-year-old and see them all fascinated by the miniature world pictured in the virtual town Wimmlingen (Bustletown in English).
Seven scenes from this town (a residential street, a farm, a railway station, a city plaza, a department store, and a park) are shown through spring, summer, autumn, winter, and a summer night.
There are so many intertwined stories and tiny details to observe – a family welcomes a new baby, a kindergarten is being built, a vending machine is broken and then fixed, a new road is built, and romance is in the air.
I also like this kind of open-story book because there is no structure, eyes fly around all the details, and we can construct our own stories.
As we had these books for quite some time, I watched in amazement how we progressed from adults telling stories to our child pointing and starting to tell her own stories, and now we make stories across all seasons, following a specific character.
These books showed us how a child progresses from building words to building worlds.
I’ll keep an eye on the German version of Amazon looking for wimmelbuchs. Why the German version? After all, a German invented this genre, and from what I gathered researching for this article, there is a whole culture of wimmelbooks in Germany.
I bought all five books (we have the German edition for the summer night book) to have a complete set. Now I see the French edition has all the Bustletown books into one giant book. You can find something similar for a German edition here.
This set became one of the mandatory birthday presents I buy, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone.
If you want to read more about some more recommendations, other articles are about:
- Books for 0-6-year-olds
- Books for 6-9-year-olds
- Four Compassionate Picture Books For Children About Death
- Mummy, Where do Babies Come from? A Few Books to Spark a Gentle Introduction to a Sensitive Topic
- The Wisdom of Children’s Book “The Missing Piece meets the Big O” in Describing Relationships, Breakups, and Self-Discovery
- Screen Time Recommendations
- Shopping Recommendations