$7.50

Mr Tongue Story

Available as an E Book


The story is about Mr Tongue looking for his cat Mr Freckles. The fun interactive book encourages children to look at an adult’s tongue and lip movements to encourage later imitation of speech sounds. The children are encouraged to copy the movements developing pre-speech skill of imitation; to look at people’s faces, tongue and lips to encourage eye contact; increase general awareness of tongue & lips movements; and the pre-speech skill of general attention. There is a picture of a child making the requested tongue and lip movements so that children can imitate both the adult doing the movement and picture cues. 

While research has shown that non-speech oral motor movements does not directly assist in building the tongue and lip movements need to say words (Ygual-Fernandez & Cervera-Merida, 2016; Russcello, 2008) we know that Infants' language exposure largely involves face-to-face interactions using listening and visual speech cues as well as social cues – this combination that fosters language learning. Infants' audio-visual speech perception is linked with later vocabulary size, suggesting a lasting effect on language development. (Altvater-Mackensen N & Grossmann T, 2015)

  • Mr Tongue encourages children to use visual cues
  • Social focus on faces
  • Imitation skills at the mouth level
  • Attention to the tongue and lips in general
  • A fun book to encourage parent - child interactions!


Ygual-Fernandez A, Non-speech oral motor treatment efficacy for children with developmental speech sound disorders. Rev Neurol. 2016 Feb 21;62 Suppl 1:S59-64.Ruscello DM. Nonspeech oral motor treatment issues related to children with developmental speech sound disorders. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch. 2008 Jul;39(3):380-91. Altvater-Mackensen N1, Grossmann T. Learning to match auditory and visual speech cues: social influences on acquisition of phonological categories. Child Dev. 2015 Mar-Apr;86(2):362-78. doi:. Epub 2014 Nov 18.