Last Thursday ended Hudson's era in the Babies and Books class at the local library. Starting next session he will be enrolled in the Little Tykes group, where he will be the youngest among wild and wiley toddlers up to three years old. Although I know he is age-wise appropriate for the next class, I just am not sure he will fit in with the big kids.
Fittingly the theme of our last session was "Bears" and we read the cornerstone of Hudson's favorite books: Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you see? The whole series of "bear" books by Bill Martin and Eric Carle were published within the past decade making them something I was completely unfamiliar with until little man's arrival. However, we quickly learned not only were these books hip and fresh, they were pretty stinkin' cute too. Hudson loves them. From an early age, if he was fussy in the car, I could recite loudly the text of Brown Bear and he would cease the waterworks and whining.
We, of course, just have the board book version of Brown Bear..., Polar Bear..., Baby Bear..., and Polar Bear... Miss Kim's gigantic paperback version revealed something I have learned about toddler books: The board books cheat you out of a couple of pages. I am sure some great book editor thinks they are doing a favor to parents of attention-deficit-toddlers by trimming down the classics by a couple of words. However, I have a problem with this. Around Hudson's birthday I was DELIGHTED to find my favorite children's book, Old Hat, New Hat, in board book option. However, upon reading it to my son, I realized they CUT the last two pages of the book; hence, it was no longer funny. The book ends in a joke and they just chopped it out! Do they not think toddlers have a sense of humor? Do they not care about the parents reading the book for the hundredth time?
Ticked, I promptly returned it to the baby store.
Hudson is starting to get jokes in books. Sandra Boyton is another contemporary author who writes children's books. She has a cutie called Blue Hat, Green Hat. On each page a chicken (or is it a turkey?) is wearing some item of clothing wrong and says, "Oops!" Hudson loves that! He giggles when I read it. Of course, he also laughs, points to his butt, and says, "Uh oh!" when he farts at the dinner table. Maybe he will fit into the toddler storytime class afterall.
1 comment:
I hate that the board books aren't the same! You should see what they did with Go Dog Go and Are You My Mother. Both books, while admittedly long in paperback form are absolutely nothing like their board book counterparts! In fact, Go Dog Go is basically a brand new story. Except for the very end, there is really nothing from the original book except the pictures! Very irritating. Ayden loves the long, paperback version of that book and doesn't want anything to do with the board book! What a rip off!
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