The Baby Book Nook

A happy monkey on page 2 of Yusuke Yonezu's diecut board  Who is Smiling?  (2016) caught young babies' attention big time in The Sussex Baby Lab. Researchers reported this and more in a recent article  about board books and book sharing with infants. Circles (2015), also by Yonezu, is an early concept book similar in look and construction to Who is Smiling? that focuses on colors, shapes and counts. Both are alluring. Simple, bright, color-saturated images draw eyes to the page. Who is Smiling? likely has an edge with its animal faces. Both can be read, and read again, as baby grows. Early on, babies look. Almost-ones peek and poke. New twos and young preschoolers glean basic concepts. Both are BIG on IMAGINATION. The pair are published by minedition .

Just in! Two new board titles from Albatros Media for your toddler,  Baby Moni Let’s Eat! (June 2026) and Baby Moni Time to Clean Up! (June 2026) by author/illustrator Rocio Bonilla. They join Baby Moni Where’s My Teddy Bear? and Baby Moni Bath Time  published late last year. All four are available in Spanish. Each chronicles a bit of baby’s day. Baby narratives. Toddlers love them. An endearing Baby Moni helps her dad at dinner time in Let’s Eat!.  She sets the table. Very able. Time to Clean Up! features playful counting, one to five, and 1 big uh, oh . Perfect for 2- and 3-year olds. Each includes a vocabulary round-up at the end, drawing “first words” from the text for point-and-say word play. I love these books. Baby Moni is baby-relatable. Bonilla paints with a sense of humor.

Hello! I've moved to Poughkeepsie (New York, not Arkansas) and started a free online magazine about books for babies. It's called All A Board! and can be accessed via a title search at issuu.com or by clicking here . It offers a peek at new and upcoming board titles. Age icons help match babies to books based on stages of development. Articles focus on the people that make board books happen and early book sharing. The first issue is out. What's on top of your read-aloud stack?

It's tomato season in Louisiana. Translation: Tomato sandwich season!  Two slices of white lightly toasted, thick slabs of juicy red goodness, Blue Plate mayo, a sprinkle of salt. Summer HEAVEN.   Does your tot take to tomatoes? Does she beam at the sight of green beans? Does eggplant egg cite him? I thought not. Board books can help.   In their 2014 article Let's look at Leeks! Picture Books Increase Toddlers' Willingness to Look At, Taste and Consume Unfamiliar Vegetables , UK r esearchers Philippa Heath, Carmel Houston-Price and Orla B. Kennedy conclude that reading books about veggies to a two-year-old can increase his interest in the nutritious fare.  Study participants were more apt to eye, try and eat more of a vegetable that they'd read about with their moms, given the vegetable was new to them.  The children in the study were 19 to 26 months of age, which is important because strictly speaking study results relate only to same-aged kiddos. Moms wer...

Give yourself and your baby a present.  Time. Time together, apart-from-others time. No ring tones. No sass tones. No Ho! Ho! Ho!  Quiet, one-on-one book time, one-on-one look time. Sleepy head, head on shoulder time.  Quiet LOUD (2003) by Leslie Patricelli .

There's still time! I traveled north this past Thanksgiving: 48 auto hours made possible by CD's, audio books and coffee, no cream, no sugar. A new purchase, You are My Little Bird (2006) by Elizabeth Mitchell, was among the mix. If you need a last minute baby gift, or clap happy entertainment for car seated little ones, this is it. You are My Little Bird is a compilation of children's folk songs sung in clear soft tones by Mitchell and friends. Most are in English, one is in Spanish, one in Japanese, one Korean. A favorite of mine, "Little Liza Jane," takes me back to Preservation Hall in New Orleans. Best books for very young babies carry rhythm and rhyme. Songs on paper. Young babies, ears awash in language sounds, face the daunting task of parceling and making sense of what they hear. Playful, beat-driven verse helps. Anthony Seeger, former Director Emeritus of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and You are My Little Bird 's producer, writes, M...

Count My Kisses, 1, 2, 3 and Red, Green, Blue, I Love You , both published in June of this year, were recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission on September 11, 2013. Check your book stacks. For details, click here .

Dear Dad, Do you like my hat? This phrase brings back very vivid memories of morning and evening greetings in the Allentown house. Waking up to Go, Dog. Go! quotes and eating cinnamon toast with my knees tucked into my over-sized, worn-out, Eagles t-shirt. That pretty much encapsulates ages five through nine. I know that when you said it you were basically guaranteed a comment and an eye roll about your clearly hatless head, but I hope you know that as an adult, it has become one of my favorite memories of my Dad. I love you and I'm so happy that I got a Dad who quoted talking dogs. Otherwise life could have been boring and who knows if I could be as proud about anybody else. Love, Molly Found note. True story. True dat! True dad. Go, Dads. Read! Happy Father's Day.

Is your baby learning English and Spanish? Here are 5 bilingual picture books for bab ies 0 to 5 months of age. Each bathes ba by's ears in lyrical language sounds. Each is eye-catching. T uck away books when baby starts reaching. Take them out again when they turn... five?      

I've been on the road . I stopped by The Strand, a large independent bookstore in NYC, to look at their board book offerings . The 18 miles of a isles were packed with grown-ups and kids a nd me, plump with batting to fight the cold and windy streets. I barely fit! I shopped with haste . H ere is what I found.   The Noisy Book (2012) by Soledad Bravi is a near-perfect word learning book for ones and twos. Why near? Research suggests young 1-year-olds learn best from photographs. Bravi's page design --one object per 2-page spread-- holds constant, assuring a single point of view for book talk.  A colorful patchwork of thumbnail prints, drawn from The Noisy Book 's interior, blankets the inside front and back pages, creating a wonderful opportunity for point-and-label play and word review. I spied a board edition of The House in the Night (2011) by Susan Marie Swanson  and Caldecott Medal winner Beth Krommes. The book's gentle cadence and warm glow make ...

These three hardcover picture books recently got board. The younger format makes great reading for almost-threes. Bob Shea's dinosaur conq u ers the day in Dinosaur vs. Bedtime (2011). He writes, ROAR! I 'M A DIN OSAUR! ROAR! NOTHING CAN STOP ME! Playtime, mealtime, and b athtime are KO'd by this likable Roarosaurus. Brilliant pictures add punch. Do you live with a dinosaur? He will love this book! P.S. Read red. Did you know that 2- and 3-year-olds rarely look at book print? They eye the pictures. Reading researchers point to a relationship between preschoolers' print awareness and early elementary reading ability. What can parents do? P oint o ut p rint as you read:  POP! Playfully. Sparingly. Once per book for 1-year-olds; twice for 2-year-olds; thrice for 3's. Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type (2010) by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin makes it easy. Words embedded in pictures beg for attention. Play off the page. W rite, illustrate, and post crayon...

Super Chicken! (2013) by Rebecca Purcell has holes for poking, bold patterns for gazing, and pretend play aplenty. Take the cover : Super Chicken's goggles are die-cut. Baby pokes . Mom labels,  Eyes! Turn the page. Super Chicken's cape has a star cut-out. Baby pokes . Dad labels, C ape! Poke and point. Point and label. Perfect! Holes vary in size and s hape throughout , accommodating baby's first finger or fist, depending. The book is bigger than most boards, a full 8 1/4 by 8 1/4 inches . Pictures are bright and eye-catching.   P airs of 2-page spread s tell three s imple stor ies about Chicken's day. For example, Purcell writes, Chicken builds a castle out of blocks. Chicken plays . Very basic . Turn the page. Super Chicken rescues a baby dragon!   Chicken's super imagination takes her high above the castle turned me dieval mansion to rescue a dragon in distress, a small stuffed animal plucked from the previous page...

Here's a peek at January '13 releases. Is there one you'd like to hear about?

Comment Number 3 was chosen at random from a set of numbers 1 through 11. Congratulations , Donna ! Please email  me for shipping details. Thanks, everyone, for entering! Stay tuned for more baby book news!!!

Out with the old , i n with the new ! To make room for 2013 review books , this year's stack must go . I need your help to find these wonderful new old books a home . Please nominate a group or agency in need of baby books in the comments section below--your child's day care center or a nursery school or a local literacy organization, for example . I'll choose a winner at random then po st two packages--one to you as a thank you , packed with the 5 books pictured in my December 22 blog post, and on e to your nominee , packe d with the books below : All Gone! , I Went Walking , Kiki's Blanket , No More Blanket for Lambkin! , What Can I Hear? , Giddy Up, Li'l Buckaroos! and  Ahoy, Li'l Buccaneers! , four Noodle books , Peek-a-boo! , Pat the Bunny , Peek-a Who? , Baby Play , I Kissed the Baby! , Kiss Good Night , Chicky Chicky Chook Chook , Chicka Chicka Boom Boom , Meeow and the Pots and Pans , Mother Goose , One Moose, Twenty Mice , Th e Apple Pie T...

Holiday bows. Rudolph's nose. Ho! Ho! Ho!   Babies like the color red. Perhaps because it is one o f the first colors they see. Babies are born with limite d c olor vision. Researchers Adams, Courage, and Mercer (1994) report in their article, "Systemic Measurement of Human Neonatal Color Vision," that 74% of newborns in their study sample were able to see a patch of red set against a neutral hue, 36% were ab le to see green, 25% yellow, and a scant 14% a patch of blue. "At 1 mont h, performance improve d s omewhat although infants still showed clear evidence of discriminating only the red patch." In the 2010 article, "Infants' Preferences for Toys, Colors, and Shapes: Sex Differences and Similarities," researchers Jadva, Hines  and Golombok found that 12-, 18-, and 24-month-olds "preferred reddish colors to blue." Similarly, researchers Anna Franklin, Laura Bevis, Yazhu Ling, and Anya Hurlbert found that 4- and 5-month-olds looked ...

Tur(key)- duck- (chick)en, too! Pass the dressing, PLEASE! Thank you! Turnips , Taters, by the bowl ,  Where's the green bean casserole? Apple pie and Pumpkin mousse , Quiet time with Mother Goose. Sleepy, sleepy, everyone. Too much turkey . Too much fun . WAKE up! (Cooks, go back to sleep.) Happy Thanksgiving!