Reading with babies

At Moxie's suggestion, KJ Dell'Antonia of Raising Devils included me in the blog tour for her new book (with Susan Straub), Reading with Babies, Toddlers, and Twos: A Guide to Choosing, Reading, and Loving Books Together.  It's true that my kids are more than twice as old as the target audience, but I thought the book would make a great gift for my sister, and I was curious to see how much of the material made sense in light of our past experience.

Straub and Dell'Antonia introduce a host of worthwhile book-reading topics, everything from where to buy books to how to read them ("if you do a really special and amazing voice or sound once, expect to be doing it again.  And again.  And again.")  At various points in the book, they describe how your baby and toddler might interact with books, and what to look for, according to her current developmental progress.  There are highlight boxes for "Irresistible Authors" as well as quotations by parents about reading.

And luckily, although there are the usual claims about reading and intellectual development, Straub and Dell'Antonia mostly keep their focus on the emotional and interactive benefits of reading.

Reading can make raising your baby that much more wonderful.  At its best, it's a chance to snuggle in tightly and quietly enter another world together.  At the very least, it's a distraction from a difficult moment or a difficult day.  Sometimes it's a last-ditch effort to provide entertainment when you simply haven't got another creative thing left to give.

As good as all that material is (and I'm a sucker for other parents' stories about reading), the reason this book deserves a wide and diverse audience is its booklists.  There are 84 lists (by my quick count), covering everything from "The Sure-Fire Baby-Shower Booklist" to "Ten Books that Play to Common Toddler Obsessions" to "Fairy Tale Collections to Make You Happy Ever After."  Not to mention "Six Screaming, Tantrummy, Let-it-All-Out books."

Because of its layout -- the lists collected amongst concise, readable discussions about the mechanics of reading -- Reading with Babies makes a great resource for parents for a number of years.  It's light enough to be held in one hand, written to be read in small doses, and therefore ideal reading material when your baby is brand new.  (I can't be the only person who will never read The New Yorker so completely as I did in those first months of breastfeeding.)  The book is sized small enough to fit in your purse, so you can take it along to the bookstore or library later when you're looking for new books -- and the lists would help you seek out more on your baby's latest obsession.  (They cover the standard how-to topics, too: potty training, big-kid beds, new siblings, etc..)  This definitely seems like the ideal baby-shower gift.

I do have one minor quibble: it's hard to know exactly which books on which list will work for which age. There are early lists quite definitely appropriate only for the youngest babies, as Straub and Dell'Antonia make clear.  Later on, however, the lists mix books for toddlers right in with books Elba and Gemma and Wilder are still reading now, at age five.  That makes sense -- many of the books the kids read as three-year olds are still popular in our house -- but it might be frustrating when your baby is one or two, not knowing until you see the book whether the layout and word-count are age-appropriate.  I imagine a lot depends on the baby: none of my kids would have sat still for Bedtime for Frances when they were 21 months old, but it was one of Dell'Antonia's son Sam's favorite books at that age.

Because of that discrepancy in the lists, I find myself unwilling to pass the book along to my sister as planned.  At least not until I've checked out a few of the more intriguing titles at the library, anyway.  I know there are a bunch of books in Reading with Babies, Toddlers, and Twos that Elba, Gemma, and Wilder would love to read.  Maybe I'll just have to buy my sister a copy of her own....

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Okay, I have two minor quibbles.  The first list I read, before I even started the book, was the very last list, "First Chapterbooks to Share."  And first on that list was Betsy-Tacy, which you might remember was enormously, hugely popular here.  I read Betsy-Tacy when I was a little girl, and the copy on my shelf was a gift from my aunt, who read the entire Betsy-Tacy series when she was a girl.  Betsy-Tacy was especially dear to our hearts because the books are set in Mankato, Minnesota; they're barely-disguised autobiographies of the author Maud Hart Lovelace's childhood there, at the turn of the last century.  I thought it was a great sign that Straub and Dell'Antonia included Betsy-Tacy on the list.

I was less pleased to read their description of Betsy-Tacy: "The first book in the series about two little girls in turn-of-the-century Wisconsin."

Oh my goodness.  You all understand that Minnesota and Wisconsin are very different places, right?  The last chapters of Betsy-Tacy even center around the girls' obsession with that famously exotic locale, Milwaukee.  Betsy and Tacy, interrupted by the neighbor boy Tom while playing "drive to Milwaukee," decide to visit St. Paul instead, rather then share their Milwaukee-sized dreams.  These are definitely Minnesota girls.

Needless to say, the Betsy-Tacy Society is not amused.

Comments

[Katrina]

oh that made me smile:) I have not thought about the Betsy-Tacy books in a long time, but did love them!

[cloudscome]

I will have to take a look at this one! Looks interesting!