The Baby Book Nook

Toddlers love to read about themselves, which is one of the reasons why books such as Baby's Day by Michel Blake and I Can by Helen Oxenbury work.  Imagine handing your tike a board book starring — drum roll, please — them! Pint Size Productions  makes this possible. Click the company name to find out how. What might your baby's board book look like? How about one that pictures family members doing whacky, unexpected things? Does Mom do the cooking? Take a close-up of Dad stirring at the stove. Does Dad read the paper? Take a peek-a-boo view of mom peering over newsprint. Picture Grandpa pushing the stroller, Grandma with a fishing pole. If you play with family stereotypes, you'll likely tickle your toddler's funny bone.  A directorial tip: Dress cast members in bright, colorful clothing for maximum color contrast on the page.  How about a book about your baby's day? Picture and label her waking, eating, playing, reading, laughing, hugging. Time for bed...

Very young babies can not see stars. In her 1997 article "First Glances: The Vision of Infants," researcher Davida Y. Teller simulates what babies can see with a series of hazy snapshots. The photos drive home one point and raise another. First, if we want babies, 6 months and younger, to look at a book, we have to offer one that has strong visual elements such as Twinkle, twinkle! by amazing baby™ or Hello, Bugs! by Smriti Prasadam and Emily Bolam. Second, very young infants rely heartily on hearing and touch to get a sense of their world. Very early on, a loving look likely says a little. A soothing voice and gentle touch likely say a lot.

Several of Eric Carle's board books are available in Spanish, including La oruga muy hambrienta (2002), the Spanish edition of The Very Hungry Caterpillar , and La oruga muy hambrienta/The Very Hungry Caterpillar (2011), a bilingual edition released in May of this year. The latter is available at the publisher's website . Are you raising a bilingual baby? In her recent post "Bilingual Babies: The Sooner, The Better," Ana Flores,  co-creater of the online resource SpanglishBaby , writes, "... the earlier we start exposing babies to a second language, the more flexible their bilingual brains will be and the more they can identify and separate the sounds of the different languages they are exposed to." La oruga muy hambrienta/The Very Hungry Caterpillar puts two languages on baby's plate. Yum!

A perfect pairing for 9- to 15-month-olds: The Very Hungry Caterpillar's Favorite Words (2007) and The Very Hungry Caterpillar (1994) 5 by 7 inch board edition. Both are written, designed, and illustrated by Eric Carle. The first is a small fistful of words, a 2 1/4 by 2 1/4 by 2 1/4 inch cube book. Ten words fill 20 THICK board pages. Pictures and verse are pulled from Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar : The small chunky serves as an appetizer for the famous main.  The plot of The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a bit beyond a 9-month-old's cognitive grasp, but the book as a w(hole) is not. Round cut-outs cue poking. A poke leads to a point. A point leads to a label. Labels lead to word learning.  Apples , pears , plums . ICE CREAM ! Center page widths vary, facilitating independent page turning. Read and reread Favorite Words before sharing the longer story. Your baby will build a picture and word bank to draw on, making the second book more digestible a...