Board books will drive you crazy.
You’ve just transitioned from whatever lifestyle you enjoyed pre-baby (with eye contact! And pants with buttons! And using both hands to eat! And three hours of sleep in a row!), into a world of snuggles and nursing, and ALL the bodily fluids.
Of course, your intuition (and every How-to Parent book you were presented with) is telling you to read to your child. So you do. And your lifestyle takes yet another transition- you go from your own books with detailed characterization, rich settings and backgrounds, and personal growth and understanding (or learning all about some lady’s “inner goddess,” I’m not here to judge) to “board books.”
Now, whatever scrap of spare time you can pull together goes like this:
Dog. Cat. Sheep. Mouse. Pig. Chicken. Brown. Red. Blue. Green. Circle. Triangle. Square.
Plus, these books will be sticky. Geez. And if you’re still nursing, you’re not even allowed to have a drink. You are setting yourself up for crazy.
I wish I knew about BabyLit board books when my daughter was small enough to appreciate them. Part educational (counting, colors, shapes), part silly reference to great classics of literature, BabyLit books will at least keep you cracking up in the *good* way.
Titles include:
Little Master Stoker’s Dracula (counting)
Little Master Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (counting)
Little Master Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (colors)
Little Miss Bronte’s Jane Eyre (counting)
Little Master Melville’s Moby Dick (oceanography!)
Little Miss Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (weather)
And Alice in Wonderland, which is a disaster in whatever incarnation it finds, so no endorsement on that particular title here.
In addition to the cuteness factor, and a little bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, I do believe there is something to be said for exposing your children early and often to good literature. BabyLit’s Pride and Prejudice has almost nothing to do with Ms. Austin’s classic, but perhaps a little girl who took breaks from tummy time to read the board book version with Mama might not be so scared to pick up an abridged version of the story (instead of sparkly vampires), and then the full classic (instead of Fifty Shades). Why not take this opportunity to “hammer in a peg” and build a great love of literature from such an early age? (okay, maybe I’m judging just a little)
If you have a tiny kid, or are stymied shopping for the caretaker (or future caretaker) of a tiny kid, do yourself a favor and check out these little gems.
Do you have any other book recommendations for little ones? I’d love to hear about it! I hope to have a growing section of “kids books for people who like kids– and themselves” here at TheSitComMom.com Y’all come back now!
