The Baby Book Nook

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...

Aaron Mead, from Children's Books and Reviews , has published a wonderful free eBook titled How To Choose Children's Books Practical Tips and Philosophical Reflections on Picking Books for Kids . It covers all age ranges and is chock full of resources. I especially like Chapter 2. In it, Mead alludes to what reading researchers Scarborough and Dobrich term The Broccoli Effect . Vegetables are good and good for you, but few among us want all vegetables all the time. Well-meaning parents (like me) push nutrition: EAT YOUR PEAS! (I like peas.) The problem is, if you force feed anything, including read-aloud, it can become distasteful. (Canned peas. I even like these!) There may be moments, days, perhaps even weeks, when your baby shows little interest in books. Not to worry! Try taking the text off the page: "Peas Porridge Hot" at meals or "Rub-a-dub-dub" at tub time. Take a walk. (I'll talk more about that next week.) Or simply take a break. ...

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.

Reading researchers Monique Senechal, Edward H. Cornell and Lorri S. Broda studied the book behaviors of 36 babies: twelve 9-month-olds, 12 17-month-olds, and 12 27-month-olds. They summarized their findings in an article titled "Age-Related Differences in the Organization of Parent-Infant Interactions During Picture-Book Reading." Babies were introduced to two books each of three reading sessions. The researchers noted, The youngest children, on average, looked at the books for 55% of the duration of the reading episode. The 17-month-olds looked at the books for 73% of the time, and the 27-month-olds looked at the books 88% of the time. In addition, the youngest children looked at the book less and less as the reading progressed. In other words, the older babies looked longer than the younger babies and the 9-month-olds (only) experienced looking fatigue during the course of a single book. Babies vary. Senechal's statistics are based on group averages rather than a si...

NUMERACY 101 * Toddlers and 2-year-olds learn their numbers one by one and in order. Do not expect your little one to understand the concept of 3 before she has a firm grasp of 2 , or 2 before 1 . Two-year-olds might successfully retrieve one of something, but if you ask for two, three, or more of anything you'll likely get a handful. Two- and 3-year-olds can count small sets of things... How many cookies are on your plate? One, two, three.  Yet most lack the understanding that the last number counted, 3 , means that you have three cookies. Yum! First counting books focus on numbers 1 and 2, such as What is 2? by Molly Carroll, above. That said, board books that introduce numbers 1 through 10 are easy to adapt to your toddler's level of understanding. Simply talk a lot about the low numbers and a little about the high. *Based on research by Karen Wynn, Ph.D.,  Lab Director at The Infant Cognition Center at Yale University

Reading the same book over and over and over again at your child’s request can peel away your patience and make you want to cry. Think onion. But go with it. Each reread creates a new layer of book understanding: Peeling an onion in reverse. Consider the following excerpt from What Research Reveals: Foundations for Reading Instruction in Preschool and Primary Education (2002) by Susan B. Neuman: "Repeated readings appear to further reinforce the language of the text as well as to familiarize children with the way different genres are structured (Eller, Pappas, & Brown 1988; Morrow 1988). Understanding the forms of informational and narrative texts seems to distinguish those children who have been well read to from those who have not (Pappas 1991). In one study, for example, Pappas found that with multiple exposures to a story (three readings), children's retelling became increasingly rich, integrating what they knew about the world, the language of the book, and the mess...

Does your toddler like to read upside down? If so, he’s not alone. Researchers Judy DeLoache, Sophia Pierroutsakos, and David Uttal (2000) took a look at the picture book orientation preferences of 18-. 24-, and 30-month-olds. The 1½ year olds in their study showed little preference regarding right side up versus upside down book reading, the 2½ year olds showed an emerging right side up preference, and the middle age group fell, well, in the middle. Remarkably, an upside down view does not appear to impede learning: The youngest children interpreted book pictures accurately in right side up and upside down test conditions.   Silly Sally went to town, walking backwards, upside down . . .    Silly Sally , a cumulative rhyming tale by Audrey Wood, is a topsy-turvy read-aloud for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. P.S. No need to turn the book around.