Babies are great, loving, sleepy, messy little people. These posts are all about them.
Taking a literary classic and distilling it down into a board book that has just over 150 words is no small feat. It’s an even taller order to make it from intellectual property that’s known to any child over six years old. As if that wasn’t challenging enough, let’s make the art so beautiful and engaging that a 12-year-old stops and says, “great art”. Baby Classics, Frankenstein grabs your attention from its cover and continues its handle on you throughout the book.
When you have children that are older than kindergarten you miss out on certain cultural touchstones that might be unique to that generation. Every age and generation has their own thing that they respond to like a Pavlovian dog hearing a bell and knowing what that means. For pre-K and kindergarten ages one of the biggest things now is CoComelon. It was Greek to me until I was flailing about whilst substituting to a group of first graders. The lesson plan I was provided with ran short and I looked in my computer bag that doubles as a book bag, to see what I had. “You have CoComelon”, said one of the kids in a tone that bordered on inquisitive, a little surprised, and just a hint of ‘please don’t tell my friends that I still like them’. Yes, I had CoComelon, The Wheels on the Bus, and the first-grade class was promptly saved, or at least granted a five-minute lifeline until specials started.
As an ex-Great Movie Rider I shouldn’t like Disney All Aboard! Mickey’s Railway. While this over 3-foot board-book is not directly related to Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at The Disney Studios in Orlando, Florida, it looks like the ride’s concept work. As if to pour salt in the wound out 11-year-old just commented, “Mickey’s Railway”, isn’t that a ride?”. I’m glad that our son follows the comings and goings of WDW, and if he were about eight years younger, Disney All Aboard Mickey’s Railway would be his board book jam.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. I know the saying. Yet, I was completely judging Sharkblock before looking at it. Ironically, my first thought was that the ‘block’ series has jumped the shark. How could Franceschelli and Peskimo make a block book about sharks that was something more than just a board book asking young readers to look at the sharks? Quicker than you can say ‘hold my cartilage they’ve made a book that continues the excellence that you’d expect from this series. Sharkblock has the thick, interactive pages that fans of the series expect to see, but has added education in the most kid-friendly way possible to their subject matter.
Montessori. Just the mere mention of it can confuse, intimidate and equally raise or repel parents to their education line in the sand. We think of Montessori as a way of teaching in a way that lets kids find the answer, lets them think more on their own, or uses different methods to engage the students. For example, I teach at a public school, but my methods are ‘Montessori-esque’, in that I’ll let the students dangle on the fishing line of education for a while before I give them the answer. It’s better to teach kids how to get to the answer than to just provide them with it. Those new or expecting parents who want to inspire newborns through crawlers with various concepts should check out Baby Montessori Boxes Set.
We’ve been fans of the Abrams Block Books since AlphaBlock came out and taught our then three-and-a-half-year-old his letters. Internally, I’m going whaaa, it’s really been eight years? That comes for both the age of our oldest son and how long it’s been since we received AlphaBlock. That book series evolved into dinosaurs, numbers, building, Disney, Marvel, and more. With LoveBlock the series from Christopher Franceschelli with art by Peskimo has changed again, albeit in a very subtle way.
Keepsake is a loaded word. On one hand, it reminds us of some cool Christmas ornaments, that we love, put in those specialized boxes every year, and still purchase more of every season. To some people, that word is simply used by companies to imply that the product is worthy of being celebrated in a family for years or generations. For example, I learned that my Star Wars shirt from 1977 is not a keepsake that my children would like to wear. A Book About Dad or A Book About Mom, With Words and Pictures By Me with illustrations by Irena Freitas, is a keepsake book for all the right reasons.
When is a board book not a board book? I’ve asked this riddle before, but it deserves to be asked again. Busy Bots is a board book that occupies one of the interesting corners of the crawler book library. It’s a STEM-minded board book that turns real tools into insects, animals or pretend animals that will leave ages two through seven grinning for multiple reasons.
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