‘Feel Your Reading Book’, series of six tactile children’s books
Bas’s cart
This is a slightly more complex story with lots of details for children who are further with learning braille. A boy called Bas makes a wooden cart which he then uses to run little errands: taking a sock to his uncle, returning a lost cat, delivering a rose, etc.
The cart is repeated in the same way on each illustration. As the story develops various objects are placed on the cart. It is no surprise that this book comes with a little wooden cart which the children can use to act out parts of the story, experiencing what it means to ‘pull the cart’, ‘put the ball in a box’ and so on.
The story has been carefully written to contain prepositions of places and direction. These are concepts which can be challenging for a visually impaired child. Through interacting with the illustrations, for instance ‘taking a card with a message in braille out of the bag, on the cart’, a child can gain greater understanding of what these prepositions mean. Navigational terms are particularly important for children learning to read braille. Not only do they need to understand the six fixed positions in a braille cell but they also have to navigate on the page.
