Mommy! Mommy!

 By Taro Gomi

I really like this author.  These baby books are visually appealing and really simple.

 This story in particular is so easy for a baby to understand.  Look, there's Mama!  Oh, no, where is she?  There she is!

Over and over again.

My son goes around the house saying, "MAMA MAMA!  NO!  NO MAMA!"

He would make me read this book all day if I was willing.

Where is Baby's Belly Button

 By Karen Katz

This one is also very popular.  It's a lift-the-flap book.  Plus it's all about body parts.  This is one of the very few books that my youngest will ask to read.

There is one African-American baby and there is one East-Asian baby and the rest are white.  Equal numbers of girls and boys.

So that's something.

Five Little Monkeys Reading in Bed

 Written by Eileen Christelow

This is part of a series about the 5 little monkeys that is obviously inspired by the "jumping on the bed" rhyme.  (There is a book in the series based on the rhyme, too, though I haven't read it.)

I got this one out in desperation because my son hated every book in the house save one Sandra Boynton book that we were all tired of.

 He really didn't like this book, either, but didn't mind flipping through it on a car trip.

It's not written particularly well; you have to bend the sentences a bit to make them match up rhythmically.  The story is okay.  The monkeys make so much noise reading books in bed that Mom takes the books away, and then gets caught reading them herself.  My daughter thought it was funny.

I kind of really like that it's a single mom with five kids.  And, like, quintuplets or something.  That's brutal.

There are lots of books in this series.  Pretty much any kid who has heard the original rhyme would go crazy for any of these books, like my daughter did.  We ended up buying the one where they make the birthday cake, and I don't mind having it around the house, even though I have the same complaints about it.

Moo, Baa, La La La!

 By Sandra Boynton

My kids both love this book.  My youngest makes me read it repeatedly.

 Mostly because it has animal noises that he likes to copy. 

My daughter likes this page, because she's starting to understand jokes.

The ending only made sense to my daughter after she was three.  She now makes funny noises and laughs when it's finished.  It's nice to have a book that I can read to both of them at the same time.

The Tiny Seed

 Eric Carle

A lot of these books are available as big hardcover books, but I like the board books better.  This one doesn't really make sense for the under two crowd, but it has nice colours and it can be pulled at and chewed on this way.  Having smaller pages doesn't take away from the art, and they didn't edit the books when they made them smaller.

This one is all about seeds from a flower going through all the seasons and finally falling to the ground and making a new flower.  It's about all the seeds that don't make it and why they don't make it.

And then there's this page near the end about how the flower is so big and everyone thinks it's so amazing.  This could have been left out.  My kids just don't care about that.

And then the flower dies and sends off new seeds, continuing the cycle.  It's a good teaching book about the life cycle of plants.

Dive In!

 By April Jones Prince
Illustrated by Michelle Berg

This is a favourite in the house.  There are fights.

The writing is really bad.  Nothing makes any sense to babies, or even toddlers.  They should have not tried to rhyme any of it.

But the concept is cute.  Working mice coming out with all of their machines and equipment to fill the bathtub with water and toys.

All of the movable pieces are super sturdy. Nothing has been broken on this book yet!  My toddler is mesmerized every time he sits down with it.

We're Going to the Farmers' Market

 By Stephan Page

You know me.  I'm a pretty big hippie.  And I'm all about fruits and veg and farmers' markets.  But I picked this book up primarily because the art was appealing.  It was the nicest looking book at the library that week and, believe me, I looked through each one.  I thought maybe my son would recognize the food and be mildly interested.  Plus it's in verse, and he will currently only sit still for board books with verse.

Well, the verse is not metered.  They tried and failed.  Badly.  So my son hated it because he's so damn picky.

 But the pictures are still nice.  Lots of geometric  shapes and symmetry and simple colours and patterns.  It's very pretty.

I wish there was no text.  They tried to do a version of "To Market, To Market to Buy a Fat Pig" and got lost in this sustainability message.  It's so heavy handed that it felt like they were trying to make my children feel bad for straying from the 100 mile diet.

Plus, this meal.  Like, I would eat that, sure.  And I always serve good food for my kids.  We eat food from just about any culture and keep a variety of spices in the house.  But my one year old is not eating fish and olives.  In fact, he's teething and refuses anything that isn't blended into mush and snuck into his mouth in between bites of cracker.  And furthermore, with a baby in the house, is it possible to make labour intensive meals?  No, really, I'm curious.  When do I get to stop making casseroles?  Also, I don't take kids to market under the age of 3 if I can help it because grabbing groceries and paying for them with an angry toddler in your arms is the worst experience.

Is this a board book that teaches toddlers about everything they're missing out on because they can't get it together and eat real food and behave at the store?  Or is this is a board book for 6 year olds?  I can't decide.

What Do You Want?

 By Lars Klinting

This book was great!  We found it at the library.  I had to dig through stacks of baby books to find it.  It was the only one that looked half decent.

Digging through board books at the library is the worst ever. Especially if you have a wild walking baby with you who is inexplicably attracted to CD racks.  But who also loves picking books up at random off of shelves and running to the front with them in an attempt to shove them all into the return slot.  HE HAS TO PUT EVERYTHING AWAY.

But obviously we've stopped taking him to the library for now, so we don't have this problem anymore.

Every page has an object, and when you turn the page you find out what belongs to that object.

The only part I'm not so keen on is the little old man wanting his hat and the little old woman wanting her man, but it's not the worst thing.  It really isn't.  Maybe it's really commentary on how the man losing his hair is having an identity crisis, and the woman basically wants for nothing but her husband because she's got herself all sorted.  Or maybe it's just a really lazily written baby book.

The best parts are the stroller and the baby, or the foot wanting a shoe, or the chair wanting the table.  Basically everything else in the book.  These are things that babies understand.

For me, when I see this page, I can't help but think of my Grandma who is single and has the craziest happiest social life.  Rolling her eyes at little old men trying to hit on her.

My kids loved this book so much that it ended up covered in crayon before we returned it (luckily it comes out easily with eraser.)

Sharing Our World - Animals of the Native Northwest Coast - Board Book

 By Garfinkel Publications

I really liked the art and layout of this board book.  It was nice to look through with the kids.

However, it is really not appropriate for babies.  There is way too much text.

 Plus, on the first page it starts with an ancestor.  I can't even describe what an ancestor is to my 3 year old.  What in the world does the baby even think this is?

While looking up info on this book, I discovered that it was originally a 28 page picture book for older kids.  That makes so much more sense and would have been so much better.  I'll have to look into it for later.

Snuggle Puppy

 By Sandra Boynton

Boynton does some nice baby books, some of which my kids are crazy about, some of which are funnier to read as an older kid or adult, but there are some real duds, too.  Like this one.

It comes with a CD with music that you listen to while you read the lyrics.

 I can't really be bothered to say a lot about this.  The drawing is pretty lazy.  Most of the book is just colourful text.  The text itself is really, really lazy rhyming.

But, I guess if you like this sort of thing, then whatever.  It's not the worst book I've ever read.

Blue Hat, Green Hat

 By Sandra Boynton

Everyone gets this one, right?  I think.

My daughter didn't mind this book.  My son was OBSESSED with it.  As soon as he learned to walk (just before his first bithday), he would find this book, rush over to me, place it in my lap and sit patiently while I read it.  When I finished, he would grab it, flip it, and throw it back in my hands for another read-through.

It was pretty impressive because otherwise he hated storytime and wouldn't sit still for anything.

He obviously didn't understand the content.  He liked it, and still does, because it's really simplistic and very rhythmic.  He still mimics the rhythm of the text with melodic nonsense words every time he picks it up.

Funny Face

 By Anna Walker

This is a great book about facial expressions.  I really could have used this with my daughter when she was a baby.

My son actually likes this book a lot.  I say actually, because he isn't that keen on books.  He's only just a year old and kind of a clumsy maniac.  He has no interest in sitting still and reading.

But this book is simple and easy to follow.

 I change the text a bit so that I'm only saying the few words that he seems to know.  There's one character who has a "bunny face".  I feel like it's an inside joke or something.  It doesn't make sense, and even my daughter doesn't get the joke.  She's all, "That's not a face" and then the whole thing gets derailed into an argument.

There are a few too many pages of them dancing that are very similar.  We skip those sometimes, too.

But, overall, it's a very cute book.  I even like the pictures.

Tap Tap Bang Bang

 By Emma Garcia

This book is pretty lazy.  Lots of tools with googly eyes.

What the eff.

My daughter picked it out, probably for the googly eyes.

 Is this seriously meant for babies?  Does this even register with them?  The pictures bear so little semblance to the real tools.

I thought this one was a turkey baster at first.

 And this is a vise.  Sure.  And it makes a clamp, clamp sound?  When it clamps?  Is 'clamp' a word that babies are familiar with?  Is it one that you can explain to a child under the age of 2?

And then after a bunch of other tools, there's a random final page with a go-kart on it.  At which point I have to explain to my child what a go-kart is and how the tools made it and where the materials came from.

But I decided to send it back to the library instead.

 

Mog and Me

 By Judith Kerr

This is definitely one of our favourites.  It's a book about a cat.  It has basic everyday activities.  There's one simple sentence per page.  The art is adorable.

 My daughter has always been crazy about this book.  It is one of the best baby books I've seen with drawings rather than pictures.

The Snowy Day

This is an award winning classic.  Our edition is a board book, and I'd highly recommend getting this edition over the regular paper version.  This book is great for kids under two because of the simplicity of the text.  It's a million times better than Seuss' "Snow", because it depicts a realistic day in the snow and features simple pleasures rather than any and all snow related hobbies.

I wish our other books by Keats were available as board books, because they're slowly being destroyed.

Get Dressed Santa!

 By Tomie dePaola

It's a book about Santa having to use the potty.  So, if you're going to get a potty training book for a toddler for Christmas, I guess this is the one to get.

It's not so great.  The rhythm is uneven.  The rhyming is lazy.  The pictures are cute, though.  I love Tomie dePaola so much; I really want to cut him some slack on this one.

My daughter loves this book a lot.  But she still refuses to use the potty.

Daddy Hugs

 Karen Katz has some good baby books.  This one is a favourite for a few reasons.

First off, the art is okay.  There's a bit of collage in with the drawing/painting.  It's pretty colourful.

Secondly, it depicts an androgynous baby, and no mom.  Every other book that we have features mom and baby, and quite often it's a little girl or little boy.  There is a mommy hugs book, if you prefer, but if you're looking to balance out your collection a little and encourage a relationship with Dad, this is great. It was also really reassuring during a time of serious separation anxiety where she wouldn't give Dada any hugs, that she would still insist on reading this book over and over again because it showed that, really, she loved her dad to pieces.

Lastly, the numbers.  Usually baby books with letters and numbers are a waste of time.  This book has the numeral, the word for the number spelled out, and a number of stars to count on each page for all the numbers up to 10.  My daughter actually learned her numbers using this book.  Most of that was time, place and her temperament, but part of it was the layout and engaging subject material in this book.

ABC is for Circus

 By Patrick Hruby

We had a real hangup about baby books with bad art, and hunted high and low for something that we didn't hate.  This book made the cut.

 I actually really like it.  We all really like it.  The font is great.  The colours are wild.  The shapes are simple and graceful.

Even despite my hangup for circuses, I really like this book.

The words are pretty okay, for the most part.  They put calliope in there!  But they also put x-ray in, which is so lazy.  Though I'm not sure what else you can do for X.

The Real Mother Goose - Book One

 Traditional (Rand McNally & Co)
Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright


These are traditional nursery rhymes.  It's a little board book with a good selection and 1920's style art.

I like it.  It's basic.  It's exactly what I'm looking for in a nursery rhyme book.

Also, I got it second hand for a dollar, so the baby can chew on it.

Je T'aime de la Tete aux Pieds

 By Bernadette Rosetti-Shustak
Illustrated by Caroline Jayne Church

We like this book.  It's okay.  But it's corny.  It kind of rhymes, but kind of doesn't, and is generally geared towards the parents.  It's meant to explain all the ways that a parent loves a child, and not, as I had hoped, as a list of body parts or actions in French.  It does have one sentence per page, though, so it's right at the level that I need.  It's a great book for learning French.

There are only two pages that I can complain about:

I can't tell my child that I love her baby words.  First of all, she's a BIG GIRL, not a baby.  Secondly, don't you DARE suggest that she isn't pronouncing things properly.  And don't you dare so much as mimic her, either.  She's really touchy about her accent. 

Also, I don't feel as much love, at least in the moment, at times like these.  And my daughter reassures me that she never does anything like this, anyway, so neither of us feels like it's very representative.