The Baby Book Nook

One of my favorite board books, Moo, Baa, LA LA LA! , was recently released as a book app. Taking on an app for a review means taking on the topic of ebooks for babies. eEek. But I must, if for no other reason than to get the sand out of my eyes.   First, My bias: Board book or bust. Babies are natural scientists who form attachments. You can't test gravity with an ebook without weighty consequences. You can't tease out its compression strength with a good bang or a bite. You can't hug an ebook. You can pat one, GENTLY. You can' t take an ebook to bed. I downloaded Sandra Boynton's app, tapped the screen, and fell in love. Her e-animals MOO ve, bleat, and multiply. QUACK! says the duck. A horse says NEIGH. Tap the duck. He quacks ! A second duck appears. Tap. QUACK! A third duck, and so on, until you're just shy of a dozen Peking dinners. Tap the eleventh and a baby duck shoots across two pages to the horse on right. Tap. A baby qu...

If I find myself grinning as I flip through thick board pages, I know a book has a chance with little ones. So it goes with GIDDY UP, Li'l Buckaroos! (2011) and AHOY, Li'l Buccaneers! (2011) , a pair of first books by Mark Iacolina. The two are very much alike. The story lines are simple, energetic, and sleepy-eyed at the end. Each reads with a playful swagger. Iacolina writes in rhyme. Babies love that. He's faithful to his meter. Parents love that. Each stanza (illustrated across several pages) starts with a 2-word labeling or noun-verb action phrase and ends with a longer complex sentence, mirroring children's spoken language development. One-, two-, and young three-year-olds can connect. GIDDY UP, Li'l Buckaroos! and AHOY, Li'l Buccaneer s! are toddling picture books. Both have the language and design elements of a point-and-label board book. Both carry a story - chapters in verse - about a busy day of pretend play. GIDDY UP, Li...

Jen Robinson writes at Jen Robinson's Book Page , a wonderful website about children's books and read-aloud. She kindly agreed to answer questions about her almost-two-year-old's experiences with reading. Thank you Jen!!! How old was your daughter when you first started reading to her?                              We started reading to her in the womb. I would read to her during the daytime, and my husband would read to her before we went to sleep. Because she was born 10 weeks early, we didn’t have any books with us when we went to the hospital. It took us a day or so to start reading to her there. Her first book out in the world was Judith Kerr’s One Night in the Zoo . Her first chapter book, which I started reading to her in the NICU, was The Secret Garden . During those first few months, how did your baby signal that reading time was over?   She ...

What Can I Hear? (2011) Author/Illustrator: Annie Kubler Publisher: Child's Play Length: 12 pages Size: 6.25 by 6.26 inches Format: Board Today's review led me to an article about noise called "Effect of background noise on listening effort in normal hearing 9-11 year olds" by Clare Howard, Chris Plack and Kevin Munro. I learned what SNR means: S ignal to N oise R atio. Regarding read-aloud and little ones, the signal is your voice and the noise is the sum of sounds around you--TVs, timers, telephones, talk, and so on. Quiet voice, quiet place? High SNR. Loud voice, quiet place? Higher SNR. Quiet voice, loud place? Low SNR. Howard and her team were interested in the effects of classroom noise on listening ability. Not surprisingly, the sample of 31 nine, ten, and eleven year olds had to work harder at listening in loud test conditions. They also made more listening mistakes. Do babies and toddlers find it harder to listen in a noisy r...