So They Sent Me a... LION!

Dear Zoo, written and illustrated by Rod Campbell

Eliza LOVES this one. She is very interested in lifting flaps right now (at eight months old), and this book seems to really please her. She is so eager to lift the flaps, she springs to grab each flap as soon as we turn the page, as if to beat me to it.

The premise is:"I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet. They sent me a... [lift flap to reveal animal]. It was too [insert adjective]. I sent him back." This repeats from elephant (too big) down to frog (too jumpy). It ends with the zoo sending a dog, which was perfect.

The only critique I have is that the flaps are not baby-friendly. They are recessed into the page. To help with this, I secretly "prep" each flap before turning the page-- I reach under the page we're reading to make the flap on the next page just slightly "ajar" so she can get her fingers under it. (Unfortunately in her frantic efforts to grab the flap she can sometimes push it back down. So, I will help again. The funny thing is, once she sees me touch the flap, she is usually not interested in grabbing it anymore and instead turns the page to get to the next one. Miss Independent!)

Here are some pics of her in action:

And, of course, the flaps must be tasted:

Four Fluffy Feathers on a Fiffer Feffer Feff!

Dr. Seuss's ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book

I like sharing this book with Eliza. She is too little to learn her ABCs, but since she is learning to speak, I like that this book covers the range of sounds of our language.

The text follows pretty much the same formula for every letter:

It is a lot of text for a baby, as you can see. I don't read all of the text every reading, necessarily-- if she is getting impatient and turns the page, we just skip a letter that time. I generally read no more than two letters per spread (some spreads feature up to four letters).

As you can expect with Dr. Seuss, the rhythm, rhyme, and nonsense humor are perfectly honed.

This book and Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?, There's a Wocket in My Pocket, and The Foot Book are our favorite Dr. Seuss books for her right now (I'll review them later). Many of the others have just too much text at the moment...though I have already purchased The Cat in the Hat and Oh, the Places You'll Go! for her... for later!

Bright Copper Kettles and Warm Woolen Mittens

A Few of My Favorite Things, song by Rodgers and Hammerstein, illustrated by Renee Graef

I love this song, and I love the way it's illustrated in this book. It's a sweet, painterly style. Each scene includes a little girl and usually also her brother. The world of this pair reminds me of my childhood in Maryland-- particularly the fall and winter months (which are so different for me now that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area).

Here is one of my favorite spreads:

That just says "late October afternoon" to me.

I don't read many "regular paper" picture books with Eliza, because she can suddenly decide she wants to crumble, tear, and eat the pages. However, if she is mellow enough, she can even help turn these pages if I prop them up for her.

I shouldn't say I "read" this to her, because I find I am actually unable to just read it-- it must be sung, just like Julie Andrews did. I try anyway.

You should hear me on the last spread:

"And then I don't feeeeeeeeeeeeeel soooooooooooooooooooooo baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad."

Anyway, if you love the Sound of Music, and if this song is an old familiar favorite of yours, this book captures it just right. I just wish they would make a board book out of it.

It's Very Good to Hear with Ears!

The Ear Book

by Al Perkins, illustrated by Henry Payne

This is such a good one! Eliza has lots of "Bright and Early Board Books," and this one is one of my favorites. The text has great rhythm and rhyme for reading aloud.

Here is an example:

The art style, the characters, and places feel like they are from a quieter time decades ago (this was published in 1968). I like that a lot.

The text has some Dick-and-Jane-esque repetition, with sentences like:

It's good. It's good to hear with ears!

And yet it's not dry to read.

Highly recommended.

It's very good to read the ear book!

The "That's Not My" Franchise

That's not my monster...

by Fiona Watt, illustrated by Rachel Wells

This is the first touch-and-feel book my baby would actually touch. (We also frequently read Pat the Bunny, but she still is very hesitant about touching that bunny!)

Each spread shows a monster that is not "mine" because it has, for example, horns that are too rough. Then, at the end, we find "my" monster!

My daughter loves those ears!

As evidenced by the entire shelf of "That's not my" iterations at my local Barnes and Noble, including "That's not my tractor" (!), the publisher, Usborne, is doing quite well with these.

I have browsed them all, and we also own That' s not my dolly...

But this one is my favorite, because those monsters are just so cute. My husband feels the same way. And I think Eliza does too! (She kissed one of the monsters tonight -- either that or she was just tasting him.)

Things You Might Not Have Known About Goodnight Moon

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd

I have read this book at least once per night since Eliza was three months old. And I have not gotten sick of it-- that is the magic of Goodnight Moon for you!

During my four-month study, I have managed to notice a few things about this dear old classic. Here is my current list:

• You can hunt for the mouse in every scene.
• The moon rises higher each time it’s in the window.
• A copy of Goodnight Moon is on the nightstand, all green though.
• A copy of Runaway Bunny (by the same author and illustrator) is on the bookshelf, also all green.
• The socks on the rack disappear when we say goodnight to the mittens on the rack. This was surely to avoid the oddness of looking at socks *and* mittens while bidding goodnight only to the mittens. (The socks get their turn with the clocks.)
• The red balloon is sometimes visible in the corner of the room, sometimes not. I imagine it floating around the room, phantom-like.
• The teats appear to have been edited out of the cow jumping over the moon—they seem to be painted over, sometimes not so well. Since I work in publishing, I imagine some executive-level person being uncomfortable with the teats, and the art having to be corrected. Who knows!

• The cow jumping over the moon appears in the Three Little Bears painting, too.

Now if I put on my "children's book editor" hat, I can tell you a few other things I notice... If you can bear with me...

• The word "goodnight" actually does not (yet) exist as one word in English. It is two words according to Websters (and therefore to the proofreaders of the world). You would think the sheer force of Goodnight Moon would have forced Websters to concede. But alas. (There are lots of similar situations, where common usage has married two words and Websters insists that the union is not legal. Rain forest and shoe box are examples. Or, sometimes Websters allows two words that are commonly married to be joined with a hyphen, kind of like a domestic partnership. "Good-bye" is in this camp. Issues like these force copy editors and proofreaders to wear down a lot of pencils.)
• There is no punctuation in Goodnight Moon. No periods to end sentences. Nothing. I suppose a copy editor could look the other way because it's poetry.

And about the art. . .

• You know how there is a limited palette of colors? Goodnight Moon was published so long ago (1947), it was before our normal four-color printing process came along. So, each of those colors was its own color plate. It looks to me like they had a red plate, a blue plate, a yellow plate, and a black plate. I bet the green was made by printing the yellow on top of the blue. So, imagine the page being composed of several layers of tracing paper, one layer for each color. Everything that was red on the page would have been rendered by the artist in black on the "red layer." Then the red printing plate would have been made out of that layer. So, you would have only seen the scene in color once it was printed... Not an easy way to illustrate a book! (Now, fyi, Goodnight Moon is printed on a normal four-color press. It's much more expensive to print it the old way now.)
• A longtime veteran in the children's book world, Christopher Franceschelli (who founded Handprint Books), told me that the reason the book has alternating color spreads and black-and-white spreads is because that was a common money-saving technique back when GM was published. So, instead of printing the whole book in color, they printed only half of it in color. Impressive how they made it seem completely intentional (as if it was done for visual variety and pacing), alternating between quiet vignettes and full-room scenes!

Eliza is calling me now... Better go! Goodbye for now! (Or Good-bye!)

Don't Mess with Brown Bear

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

by Bill Martin Jr., illustrated by Eric Carle

This is one of those perfect "first books" for baby. The repetition, rhyme, rhythm, and short text are ideal for reading aloud to a baby. The art is wonderfully vibrant and simple--bold colors and big shapes on plain white backgrounds. When you put this art and text together, you have something that pleases baby's eyes AND ears-- and really holds her attention.

Each page goes like this:

Red bird, red bird,

What do you see?

I see a yellow duck

looking at me!

This text became so familiar to my daughter that when we hand her a yellow rubber ducky in the bath, we say, "Yellow duck, yellow duck, what do you see? I see Eliza looking at me!" She loves it! We also do "I see mama looking at me" and "I see dada looking at me" when we look in the mirror. Endless fun to be had with "what do you see" and "looking at me"!

So, of course, given Miss E's excitement with this text, I went out to get a sequel. I have looked at all three (Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?, Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? and Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You Hear?). And the winner is . . .

Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?

by Bill Martin Jr, illustrated by Eric Carle

This is actually the most recent of the sequels, published in 2007, forty years after Brown Bear was published (in 1967). Brown Bear was actually Eric Carle's first book (though the art on the current board book cover, shown at the top of this post, is revised art he did for the 25th anniversary edition).

What I love about Baby Bear is that it holds true to the two things I love about Brown Bear: 1) The wonderful rhythm of the text and 2) The simplicity of the art. I think both Polar Bear and Panda Bear mess with the formula too much.

Panda Bear is particularly atrocious when it comes to the rhythm. Because it is trying to feature endangered animals, the text becomes encumbered, as many of the animals have names that are too long to work in the rhythm (which is meant for a two-syllable animal name -- or maybe three syllables if one can be swallowed a bit!). Here is an example of the terrible rhythm:

from Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?

Come on! Green sea turtle? Macaroni penguin? Talk about awkward mouthfuls! As the notion of "endangered species" is completely lost on my baby (and on most of the readership, really), I take the liberty of editing the text as I read it. So, Eliza just hears: "Turtle, turtle, what do you see?" And "I see a penguin strutting by me." I recommend that to anyone who wants to salvage Panda Bear. This book could have been great if the names had been done in short form. The full names of the endangered species could have been featured on an explanatory spread in the back (for the upper end of the readership, and for adults!).

Anyway, back to Baby Bear-- the art is also more like Brown Bear in that the backgrounds are kept pure white, so there's plenty of stark contrast. Panda Bear has some painted backgrounds (and squiggly line backgrounds like the one above) that can cause the animals to get a bit lost.

One small critique of Baby Bear-- they could have chosen a few more non-brown animals! Even in keeping with the North America theme, there's room for a yellow or green animal... And I also have to forgive the author for this stumbler: "I see a striped skunk strutting by me." ("Striped skunk, striped skunk what do you see" then follows... not so easy on the read-alouder!)

So, anyway, if you love Brown Bear and want another one, I'd say try Baby Bear next, as it's the closest sibling. Then try Panda Bear with edits. As for Polar Bear, well, that's up to you. I left that one in the store myself, as it departed a lot from the formula ("what do you hear" instead of "what do you see", and I didn't love the text). It's more of a cousin than a sibling...

Anyway, those are my musings on bears for this morning!

My Little Page Turner

My baby loves to grab the pages and turn them. She learned how to do this when she was five months old. The key is propping up the page for her, as even an adult can have a hard time grabbing individual board book pages. So, when it's about time to turn the page, I prop it up a little with my right thumb or index finger, and she grabs the page and flops it over. When she was first learning this skill, she would just grab the page and flop it back and forth. I would guide her hand to show her how to turn it just once, and in the one direction. Gradually, she started turning the pages in a purposeful way.

At times she starts trying to turn the pages too fast, as if the fun of reading the book is just about turning the pages. When this happens, I will go back to a skill an expert nanny taught me: I tap on the board book page to draw her attention to the art. The nice thing about board book pages is that they make a good sound when you tap on them with your nail. So, that gets her to focus on the page long enough for me to finish reading it (or at least for me to say a few words, so the experience feels like reading).

Then she gets to turn the page and see what's on the next one! Yay baby!

Here is a video of my little page turner in action, when she first learned the skill (at almost exactly 5 months), a bit tentative:

And here she is at 9 months, my little speed demon page turner!

We Like Your Spots. We Like You Too!

Put Me in the Zoo

Written and illustrated by Robert Lopshire

This little "Bright and Early Board Book" was a hand-me-down book from another family. We like it so much, I bought it for my sister's baby. It's about some strange creature who is desperate to get put in the zoo, and to prove he belongs there, he shows how he can make his spots change color. The two astounded children in the story suggest he might be better off in the circus. And there you have it.

If you don't mind the weird premise (please put me in a cage!), the book has a lot of visual excitement for little babies. The contrasting spots change from page to page. Our baby would actually grab the page to turn it back and look at the spots on the previous page again, like she was noticing the color change.

Babies love bright, contrasting patterns!

The text is an homage to long vowel sounds, with a particular emphasis on the "oo" sound. It is very sing-songy and fun to read. And easy to memorize without even trying!

One critique-- I think there is a missed opportunity at the end. When we see the circus on the last page, we just see the tents from the outside, from a distance. If someone didn't know the circus (like the very young children reading this book), how would they understand why this strangely talented creature belonged there? Even just a couple of monkeys on unicycles would have done it...

There's Something About Karen Katz

Toes, Ears, and Nose!

by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Karen Katz

There will be other posts about Karen Katz, but I'm starting with this one, as it's my baby's favorite Katz book. It's a lift-the-flap book in which baby's various parts are hiding under clothes and other things (blanket, lollipop), and you lift the flaps to find things.

As with all the Katz books, there are colorful, baby-mesmerizing patterns and sweet round faces throughout. The cover art says it all.

This spread gets the most coos, especially the right page:

The appearance of the bright blue eyes under those glasses gets Miss E very excited.

At six and a half months, my baby is all about grabbing and grappling with things, so she likes to lift the flaps herself. At first she lifts them and looks under them, but if I let her hang on too long, her "must taste everything" reflex kicks in, and she will pull them to her mouth. Ah, babies.

Anyway, I think this is a very satisfying first "lift-the-flap" book, because young babies are so fascinated with faces. In this book, there are lots of them to discover. We have really enjoyed sharing it with our girl.

Update: At age 9 months, she still loves the book-- though she especially enjoys tearing off the flaps these days. We were given two copies, and one of them is now retired due to extensive de-flapification.

Another Side of Richard Scarry

I am a Bunny

by Ole Risom, Illustrated by Richard Scarry

If you are most familiar with Richard Scarry's art from "Busy, Busy Town" and his various books about "things that go," this book will show you a whole other side of his talent. It has lush, painterly nature scenes in which a little bunny, Nicholas, plays with butterflies, watches birds and frogs, and takes in the changes of the seasons.

The trim of the book (tall vertical) gives each scene an a sort of grand theatrical quality. You know how opera scenery can be so big and grand that the actors look small? These tall nature scenes with a little bunny in them have a similar grandeur to them. And yet they are still so sweet. The bunny's expressions and poses are adorably childlike. Here is my favorite:

(I am no butterfly expert, but it seems that he has taken care to depict real butterflies. Same appears to be true of the birds on other pages.)

My baby seems to study the scenes; since Nicholas wears the same bright outfit in almost every scene, I think she is noticing him. Once she develops language it will be fun ask her, "Where's Nicholas?"

The text is very simple-- nothing special, but very easy and sweet to read to a baby. Just one simple sentence per spread. It is really a perfect introduction to the seasons. I can't recommend it enough! (And I thank the colleague who recommended it to me!)

A Book We Love as Much as Goodnight Moon

Like so many of her fellow babies, my daughter was given more than one copy of Goodnight Moon. Both copies were baby shower gifts, and we kept both, thinking one could stay at grandma’s house. I knew it would be an essential book.

And it is. We read Goodnight Moon every night—there is something very special about it, no doubt. It has the perfect rhythm and vibe for bedtime.

I heard recently that Goodnight Moon has had the honor of “most-returned book” at Barnes and Noble, clearly because of its status as a go-to baby gift. That’s why I’m happy to recommend ANOTHER good baby bedtime book for those who want something different.

It’s a Chronicle book (I'm an editor there, but this is not one of my books). I happened to bring it home one night, and now we read it every night, right after Goodnight Moon. It is…

I’ll See You in the Morning

by Mike Jolley, illustrated by Mique Moriuchi

It has lovely rhythm and rhyme, and it also has a sweet, reassuring message. Here is an excerpt:

So close your eyes
And go to sleep
By the light of the moon above.
I’ll see you in the morning,
In the light of the sun,
My love.

Here is a video of me and my daughter reading it:

So, if you get tired of saying good night to nobody and good night to mush…or if you’re just looking for another sweet bedtime book, try this one! It gets an enthusiastic thumbs up from me and my family. (My husband even says he likes it *better* than Goodnight Moon… sacrilege!)