My Favourite Dictionary of Toys

With ‘My Favourite Dictionary of Toys’, young children can learn their first words: ‘dog’, ‘boat’ and ‘pear’, but also ‘speed merchant’ and ‘smitten’. But to be clear, this splendid picture book by Pieter Gaudesaboos has much more going for it than just simple pictures illustrating words. An aficionado of old toys, Gaudesaboos spent many hours in the Toy Museum doing research, and this is more than clear: each print shows a toy, often recognisable to the adult reader. Fisher Price, Playmobil, Lego, Ministeck – they’re all given a loving place.

Sometimes the correlation between word and image is abundantly obvious, but occasionally the reader has to look beyond his own nose: the polar bear in question might be hidden among a host of farm animals, or a little imagination might be required to see the doll on the toy horse as a brother. With his typical style – a mix of collage, drawings and graphic work – Gaudesaboos creates a colourful book yet without excess, because he limits himself to depicting only a single word per page.

Based on this book, four smaller-format board books divided by theme were also made: ‘Animals’, ‘Colours’, ‘Counting’ and ‘Transport’.