Most novelty books give a toddler one thing to press. This one gives them lights as well as sound, which is why it holds attention about three times longer. A button on every scene sets a fire truck, an ambulance, a rescue helicopter or a coast guard lifeboat going at once, siren and searchlight together, and the beam actually shines out of the page.

Kathryn Selbert draws the crews as animals doing serious work, and the scenes are proper places rather than backdrops: a snowy mountainside at night with climbers to reach, a rough coastline at sunrise, a street where every car has pulled aside for the ambulance. There is a small lesson tucked in there about who comes when something goes wrong, and it lands without anybody having to say it.

Ten thick board pages built for the age that presses a button forty times in a row. Usborne suggests it from six months, which is roughly when pressing a thing and having the world answer stops being a novelty and becomes the entire job.

Beginners: Firefighters is the reading version of the same subject, with photographs of real crews and no batteries.