ABSTRACT
A concept contains the verbal knowledge that a person needs in order to correctly refer to a given entity. For example, the concept car enables the child to refer to cars, and the picture of a car has the intention to stimulate the child's acquisition of this concept. Early concepts belong to the young child's early lexicon and are usually acquired between twelve and eighteen months of age. The process of understanding the picture-word relationship in early-concept books is quite complex. The intensive consideration of the images in early-concept books not only fosters visual literacy, but enhances language acquisition as well. A step ahead are those early-concept books that show on each doublespread an object on one side and an activity that could be done with the object on the other, as shown in Helen Oxenbury's popular board books, such as Playing andWorking.
