Dooley Bear Adventures are wonderful picture storybooks to teach children geography and critical thinking, as well as appreciation for other cultures. The cleverly designed illustrations are hand-drawn to help enhance learning opportunities on each page while bringing the adventurous story to life. When combined with the parent handbook, tailored with suggested questions for each scene, children begin to explore Arizona while learning and practicing a multitude of skills. For instance, one of the suggested questions asked, "Why was Dooley Bear disappointed/sad?" The question enhances understanding of the story while introducing concepts such as emotions, empathy, and points of view. Another question asked, "Look at the two different types of cacti. Tell me what is the same about them and what is different." This prompt encourages comparing and contrasting, which requires careful observation, description, making inferences, and finding evidence to support generalizations. The glossary at the back of the book was a nice touch as well.

Two big paws up!

The author provides first-rate enrichment questions in the downloadable handbook for parents (available for free online). The questions focus on basic language concepts such as following directions, identifying and using descriptive words, prepositions, verbs, identifying and naming shapes, comparing, identifying members of categories, and much more. The storybook is a great learning vehicle on its own, but coupled with the handbook written specifically for each page it becomes fantastic. I also loved that the questions are separated into toddler and preschool specific sections.