The Where’s Waldo books have been around for quite some time, first published apparently as Where’s Wally in 1987. Pre-children I was always a bit confused and skeptical of the idea, finding a guy (and his friends) in a crowded chaotic mishmash of humanity. Granted, the illustrations are quite nice and there’s humor to be found in all the scenes. So…
Fast forward to having a small child. The idea of story time at night and whenever they wanted was to read books that told a story, taught a lesson, introduced something new. Big in to the classic kids books, Dr Seuss, Madeline, Maurice Sendak, you get the point. Although we weren’t all traditional, and did dive head first into much more modern kids books, which is begging for a future post. Where’s Waldo was never on the radar. Wasn’t the whole point of story time to be reading, rather than looking at pictures? Never really considered buying them. Sure enough one day coming home from preschool there was a Where’s Waldo book in the backpack.
That evening for story time I initially balked at the idea of “reading” the Where’s Waldo book, but especially when it comes to books, and story time and learning we always strive to keep it fun for everyone, and quickly acquiesced. So first foray in to Where’s Waldo. We had a great time looking for Waldo and all his buddies, as we scanned the pages we discussed different things that were happening, commenting back and forth and making up other stories to go with the images. It took all of about 2 minutes for me to get completely sucked in. Spending time with your children is of course priceless but I felt this was doing a lot more. The act of searching for something I imagine builds all sorts of skills, attention to detail, perseverance, our comments between each other good for communication “What’s that?”, “What do you think is going on?”.
At this point we pretty much can always find Waldo quickly enough, but we still enjoy taking the books out and going through them, we still talk about the pictures and we haven’t memorized where all the other characters are. And while we’re definitely on to bigger books (with words and chapters), Where’s Waldo is still a fun one.
If you too are somewhat confused and skeptical, then like our house, set it aside and go buy the books, they’re fun, amazon has the Where’s Waldo? The Ultimate Waldo Watcher Collection which has seven books. Much fun to be had.
While poking around and trying to find out more about the books and the creator, stumbled across an old article published at The Independent, Where’s the Brains Behind Wally?, if you have even a passing curiosity as to how Where’s Waldo came about, very good read.
