Sprout has a lot of books – a consequence of being part of a family of avid readers and a grandchild of a retired teacher. While some are classics, some make us question our mental health, and others are just plain weird, there are a few that are both not particularly well-known and absolutely wonderful. They made their way onto his bookshelf in a variety of ways: received as gifts, picked up second-hand, and discovered at book festivals. They have both beautiful illustrations and lyrical text.
Sprout loves books. He doesn’t read yet, but loves looking at books and spending time with them.
In fact, he can occupy himself for 10 minutes or so – a long time for a 16 month old – pulling books from his shelf and flipping through them one-by-one. He’ll stop at certain pages and focus on them, like a patron in an art gallery trying to figure out the meaning of a work. When he reaches the end, he’ll often flip back to those favorite pages, just to check if he missed something. Other pages he’ll speed past; some he skips altogether. It’s very clear he has strong opinions about what he finds interesting or not, something that runs in the family.
Unfortunately, this method of “reading” doesn’t translate well to pre-bed storytime. Often, he won’t let me hold the book or turn the pages because he wants to be in control. But I can’t read the text of the story with his chaotic jumping between pages. So we end up in an odd dance, where I try to read as fast as possible or very slowly, either skipping entire pages or repeating them multiple times, depending on his whim at the moment. In a books with rhyme schemes, I often stumble over the words because the rhythm is all off. He even flips books upside down, making it completely impossible to follow! Sometimes, I lose my patience, take the book from him, and turn the pages at my pace. Of course, he loses interest and pulls a different book off the shelf instead. His attitude seems to be: “Mommy, you can read the book you want to read, I’ll read the book I want to read.” That’s not exactly the point of storytime. So I’ve learned to adjust my reading style to suit someone whose enjoyment is entirely driven by the visuals and the cadence of my voice. Even if the story doesn’t make a lot of sense, I at least tell it enthusiastically.
In addition to bedtime, of all places, books play a major role on the changing table. He’s associating reading with pooping before he can even use the toilet! But giving him a book is the one consistent thing I can do to keep him from flipping over while I change his diaper. (Making funny noises stopped working a while ago.) To add to the benefit, his expression in the charging table is hilarious. He’s super serious, as if he’s a trader in a corner office reading the Wall St. Journal instead of a toddler with a dirty diaper flipping through a board book.
Sprout’s favorite books at the moment are an odd assortment of classics and modern stories. Most of them are not ones I bought – our families (especially my mom) have been very generous in building his library. All of his favorites are board books because we still don’t trust him with hardcover picture books yet. He’s mostly stopped munching on them (he was an actual bibliovore before), but he’s still fairly rough with the pages. We have a couple of books with inside covers that are torn because he was convinced that there was one more page to turn.
The Very Busy Spider: Eric Carle is one of the most artistic children’s illustrators ever, so this book is a pleasure to read, even for the fifth time in one night. While this one isn’t as famous as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, it’s actually more visually stunning, with each of the animals having it’s own unique combination of color and pattern. The actual texture of the spider’s web, which Sprout will show me by taking my hand and rubbing it on the page, makes visceral something we can’t even touch in real life without destroying. The repetitive structure – an animal asks if the spider wants to do something, she doesn’t respond because she’s too busy – means they you can skip pages without losing meaning, which is important with our aforementioned reading style. And it shows that spiders are beautiful, not scary! He loves The Very Lonely Firefly as well.
Let’s Sign, Baby: This one is kind of ironic because Sprout doesn’t know and probably won’t learn baby sign. Part of it is because Chris and I never really got around to learning it – teaching yourself another language is challenging enough, much less while you have a baby. Part of it is because even when we do remember to sign, Sprout isn’t looking at us, which rather defeats the point. This book has good explanations of the different signs, but I can’t tear his eyes away from the page to demonstrate them. I think he just likes the cartoons of the kids and babies.
Harry the Dirty Dog: This is one that I probably would never have bought myself, but it was my father-in-law’s favorite story when he was little, so Chris’s family bought it. The illustrations are adorable, even if the family is so 1950s suburban stereotypical. However, I don’t know how to feel about a book that says if you get too dirty, your family won’t recognize you. As Sprout gets older, we’ll stick with emphazing how good Harry is at problem solving.
The Big Red Barn: A far less well-known book by the same author as Goodnight Moon. This book about farm animals is cute, but the rhythm and rhyming structure grates on my nerves, even when it’s read correctly. It obviously has a structure, but whenever I read it, it just sounds “off.” Plus, it has the multiple ending problem a la Lord of the Rings – it should end three pages before it does. Needless to say, it’s no Goodnight Moon.
Bedtime for Chickies: This is an absurdly adorable book. It’s about three chicks that find all sorts of reasons not to go to bed, exasperating their pig, cow and sheep caretakers. The ending of the chicks only falling asleep once they are in their caretakers’ embrace hits a little too close to home, but the illustrations and the chickies’ dialogue is overwhelmingly cute.
Baby Faces: This book, which is just a series of photos of babies with captions describing their state of being (happy / sad, clean / dirty, etc) was a favorite when he was really little and has come back around again. When he was tiny, I think he just liked looking at the photos of other babies. Now, I think he’s realizing that the different expressions relate to different emotional states and finds those distinctions interesting.
What are or were your kids’ favorite board or baby books?
Chris caught Sprout “reading” earlier this week. He obviously didn’t understand the words, but there he was on the floor of his bedroom, flipping through a book page by page. As a touch and feel book, he was running his fingers over the textured spots and even had it the right side up! Moments like this make me glad we haven’t abandoned physical books yet. As convenient as e-readers are, they don’t have the material presence of books, which is essential for a child to build an appreciation of them.
For one, e-books can never provide the tactile feedback of board books. You can’t allow babies to gnaw on the edges or turn the pages with drooly little fingers, even with the best covers. There’s no such thing as a touch and feel e-book, with furry and fuzzy patches that simulate the baby’s senses. Having a direct interaction with books, not just seeing them held at the parent’s arm length and out of reach, is important for a baby. It builds an inherant affection for books that they’ll carry throughout their lives. Many lovely e-picture books have sounds and animations, but those just aren’t the same, especially for infants.
E-books also don’t have the physical presence in the house that regular books do. While this is a huge advantage when you are traveling or facing a serious lack of shelf space (who, me?), you can never get the sense of being “surrounded by books” as you can with a good family library. It’s been shown that kids that see their parents reading regularly are much more likely to read themselves. I feel that having a physical library reinforces the self-image that “we are a family who values reading and books.” To quote Wondermark, I want Sprout to be a bibliophiban, to breathe books as he does air.
Relatedly, e-books also don’t allow a child to have a personal library, unless you purchase them their own tablet. Despite Amazon’s claim that an Kindle is a perfect Christmas gift for a one-year-old, I disagree. But with board and picture books, Sprout already has a whole bookshelf full of wonderful stories that he enjoys pulling off the shelf on a regular basis. Many of them carry special inscriptions in the front, reminding him of the fact that a gift of a book is a sign of love in our family. With electronic versions, it’s much harder to pass down beloved books. It’s simple to let a child read one, but it lacks the history of worn covers and bent pages that remind you that you were once their age.
I’m glad that in this day of electronic media – which I’m certainly prone to favoring myself – that there’s still a place for physical children’s books. I know reading to him on my lap, watching him turn the pages (even if it’s often backwards), has given me more appreciation for their simple charms.
Book Club is a semi-regular feature on the blog where I reflect on a children’s book (or series) and my personal experiences with it. (Just a note on this one – this is based on three of the five Little Pookie books, but they’re simple enough that I’m guessing the three are fairly representative.)
Sandra Boyton is known for her silly, cute children’s books featuring wide-eyed animals. Although most her books lack a plot or consistent characters, her Little Pookie books dig a bit deeper, presenting a rare portrait of a present, competent modern mom, even if she isn’t human.
The Little Pookie books focus on the relationship between Little Pookie, a young pig, and his mom. (Little Pookie’s gender is never specified, but the clothes are stereotypically male.) In most children’s books, the parents are either absent or ignorant of their children’s goings-on. In contrast, Little Pookie’s mom is present and engaged with the story. In fact, she’s the narrator. The books consist of her conversations with Little Pookie, where she invites him to do something – go to bed, dance, think about who he is – and he responds.
Through these conversations, we see a mom who is a good role model for parents reading the books to their kids. She talks to Little Pookie at his level, with relatively simple language, without talking down to him. She is playful, pretending she doesn’t recognize him when he’s sporting giant sunglasses or knowing where he is when he’s hiding under the sheets. She trusts him to be independent, offering guidance without nagging: “Now you brush your fine teeth and wash your fine nose.” However, she does set limits, illustrated by her counting to three when she wants him to get ready for bed. She encourages creativity and movement, with an entire book of her inviting him to do a silly dance, including a part in “his very own style.” She offers choices and is flexible when he doesn’t quite pick either one. For example, when given two sets of pajamas to choose from, he mixes the top from one with the bottom from the other. She encourages reading, illustrated on the last page of Little Pookie, which shows them reading the very same book together in a clever bit of recursiveness for a board book.
But most importantly, Little Pookie’s mom tells him how much she loves him, sincerely and often. Because parents are often disconnected from the events in children’s books, this message usually isn’t communicated at all. On the other end of the spectrum, some children’s books focus on that message to the exclusion of everything else. As a result, it comes off as forced and saccharine. But the mom’s expressions of love in Little Pookie flow naturally from the rest of the story and relationship.
While I don’t think most parents would look to a pig as a role model, the Little Pookie books offer a surprising amount of insight into a good parent / child relationship. I know I’d enjoy having Sprout and I hang out with her and her adorable piglet.