The Button Collection is a series of six traditional style stories for young children featuring a selection of different buttons, each of them with a special story to tell. Tales of adventure and survival featuring a variety of buttons from Bertie the Soldier Button to Bethany the Explorer Button.

Each individual little book in this charming package tells the story of a particular small  button and the job that it does. These jobs include being part of a wedding dress, a clown’s costume or a train guard’s uniform. The six individual books depict how these buttons spent their days and in each case, sadly, they grew old and past their best or were no longer needed so were discarded in old trunks, drawers or wardrobes and forgotten by their owners. However, these are stories with happy endings and our little buttons find new lives as they are each discovered and put to good use once again.

The stories each follow a similar pattern and very young children enjoy this sort of repetition as they quickly come to recognise the recurring theme and begin to anticipate what will happen next. The water-colour illustrations that accompany the text are lovely and add greatly to the overall appeal of these books. I particularly liked the pictures in Bertie the Soldier Button with the small button lying among the poppies of the First World War battlefields. In each story at the point when the storytelling button becomes old and unwanted the illustrations portray the change of mood and the sadness extremely well.

The overall package is very appealing with the small books, a perfect size for small hands, placed inside a presentation box showing all the buttons and the story’s titles. This would make a lovely gift for a small child.

You can find out more about the Button Collection books on the publishers website.

The books can be purchased online or via The Cobham Bookshop, an independent bookshop in Surrey.