Animal Hide-and-Seek, by Stephen Cartwright

My son received this as a first birthday gift, and it was probably the best gift he received.

From the beginning, the big flaps encouraged him to look underneath to find the animals he was looking for, and the big variety of touchy-feely patches increased his awareness of different textures.

In the last few months, the wide variety of farm animals depicted in Cartwright's classic (and gorgeous!) illustrations have afforded an opportunity to teach and reinforce lots of animal names, and we are beginning to use it to introduce simple counting, and some texture words.

Really, I think this book has everything that a book for this age group could possibly require. I've not yet met a young toddler who doesn't enjoy it, and it's has become a staple gift for the one-year olds we know. My only criticism is that I wish there were a couple more pages, and perhaps a bit more text, as the very simple text does become repetitative for the adult reading it after the umpteenth time (though of course small children love this).