Today I found myself searching up a Boynton book.

[conuly]

I learned three things.

1. The Going-to-Bed Book apparently has an original, longer version that's recently back in print.

2. "Forest Dance" is now for sale.

3. One star reviews on picture books are still hilarious!

Just yesterday I was telling somebody about the Amazon reviewer who was upset that "Sheep in a Jeep" uses the word "heap" because, after all, two year olds don't know that word. (The percentage of reviewers who are scared of their children learning new words, or actively resent having to learn/teach new words themselves is astonishing.) Today there's two, both paraphrased:

A. The line and they dance and they dance and they dance and they dance is an example of telling and not showing!

Me: Your kid is two.

B. I wanted to like this book, but it's just too silly, especially that song at the end which might teach my child that owls say moo!

Me: First of all, your child will never ever need to know what sound owls make, nor cows. It's not actually a life skill. Secondly, owls appear frequently enough in media that you have nothing to fear on that front anyway.

Comments

[silveradept]

It is a silly comedy book and enjoyable at that. Why so serious? Neither you nor the child is reading the book as intended if you're talking Sandra Boynton actually seriously.

On the other end of the spectrum, I see all these "turn your baby into a genius with our board books!" and I have to wonder how exhausting it must be to try and keep your child on the genius path when what they really need to learn right now is that peas do not go up your nose.

[conuly]

I do not understand what bug crawled up the butt of most negative picture book reviewers, but that books are too silly comes up an awful lot.

[silveradept]

That's so odd. I don't understand why someone would complain that a book is too silly to be read, but I am also looking for books to be silly and contain things I can act out or exaggerate when telling stories in front of smalls. I like laughing with my smallings.

(Also, I really want those reviewers to have to deal with the series of "books that drive children [word]," that are specifically about situations where children would say "no, that's not it!" and things get progressively more wrong from there, based on what the child perceives the pictures to be.)

Late to the show...

[pauamma]

what they really need to learn right now is that peas do not go up your nose

So do so-called adults, apparently.