conuly | Today I found myself searching up a Boynton book.

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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

adafrog

3. Nuts!

From:

siliconshaman

Conclusively demonstrating, as if we didn't already now, that there are 'Karens' everywhere, and they share one common brain cell, meaning they have maybe a spark of intelligence for like a millisecond before it's some other Karen's turn with it.

From:

ioplokon

Also 'and they dance' is waltz meter so repeating it is, in fact, both showing and telling.

(and fwiw not knowing animal sounds in French comes up surprisingly often in my life... It's not a huge impediment, but I'd say about once a month, I'm like, what does the X say?)

From:

james

Or their child will be driven to become an owl scientist, which is also excellent.

From:

conuly

Parents of toddlers and preschoolers can be so intense. It's... wow. I just want to shake them all and say "Listen, whatever you're freaking out about today is just not gonna matter in 5 years, much less 25".

From:

conuly

It's an anapest.

(Which I only know because of the mnemonic.)

From:

conuly

Unlikely, and I don't want to encourage this sort of thinking in that sort of parent. They already think their pettiest decisions are SO LIFE CHANGING.

Edited Date: 2021-12-13 12:41 am (UTC)

From:

conuly

Yeah, they are always good for a laugh.

(Unless there are gays in the book, in which case they're not.)

From:

crystalpyramid

In my experience of two year old, they are much more likely to get very offended by the idea that a non-cow is saying moo, than to learn it wrong. But it's not like Sesame Street didn't make the same joke!

From:

mama_kestrel

Or maybe it's a (gasp) joke your child might get!, as the parent clearly didn't.

(Do owls say moo? No? That's so silly! What do owls say? Owls say Whoo!)

From:

readerjane

Oh, that makes me boil. Kids learn words in context; that’s how they’re supposed to learn new words. If that context is broadening their vocabulary, parents ought to be dancing with joy right alongside them. I want to go jousting to defend Sandra Boynton. Ooh, think what a cool book SB would make of that. 😀

From:

ioplokon

Bc of the repetition, I would read it with more even stress & spacing (like Shall We Dance from the King & I)

From:

conuly

I sometimes wonder if these people just never were taught to learn new words from context, or if they simply didn't pay any attention when the subject came up.

From:

pauamma

o/~ Mais qu'est ce que ça peut faire / Comme bruit un kangourou o/~

From:

conuly

When two year olds get ridiculously uptight about silly things, it's age appropriate!

From:

pauamma

Me, a 59 year old bilingual adult: *has a word for $concept in $one_language but not in $another_language*
Me, reading something in $other_language: *comes across $word_I_never_saw_before* Oh, so that's the word for $concept!
(It helped that it was a calque, but still. If you don't learn that skill as a kid, you'll never be able to use it as an adult.)

From:

hudebnik

Don't most two-year-olds love cognitive dissonance such as owls saying "moo"?

From:

crystalpyramid

Hmm, maybe I've forgotten in the solemnity of my three year old!

From:

adrian_turtle

I explained the concept that "children learning new words is not a bad thing" to an actual six-year-old last month. I managed to do it without laughing at her, but it was a near thing.

From:

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.

From:

oracne

Boynton is the best.

From:

ioplokon

Personne ne sait vraiment...

From:

adrian_turtle

Yes...but I am also inclined to be forgiving. Sleep deprivation makes previously-reasonable people lose their damn minds in a variety of ways. The effects are cumulative, and I'm not surprised when they include paranoia.

From:

conuly

What word was she learning?

From:

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.

From:

conuly

Duh.

From:

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.)

From:

conuly

Speaking of the silliness of children, every year I suggest to my sister that she ought to mail a potato to her boss for Hanukkah. (There are several companies that will mail the potato for you, just affix a stamp and write the address on it and you're good.) Every year she tells me "gifts flow down", but really, a potato is not a gift.

To date, nobody in the world has taken me up on my suggestion to mail a potato to anybody else.

Do you think a small somebody might be amused at a potato in the mail next year? I still keep freezing up in the decision making process for books 2021, but potatoes are potatoes.

From:

adrian_turtle

I don't remember. It was probably something like "election." Maybe "speculating." Her father and I were talking about why her Sunday school was closed the week before*, and she got very angry that we were using grown-up words instead of kid words. I pointed out that she was much more grown up than she had been the last time I saw her (bigger and stronger! with so many grown-up teeth! reading by herself!) She is rightly proud of all that. When you were a baby, you didn't know ANY words, but as you get closer to being grown-ups, you can use more words. And if there's one you don't understand, just ask.

*Even if they have to use the public schools as polling places, and even if they have a policy of closing Sunday school whenever the district public schools are closed Monday, the district schools would only be closed Tuesday. So what happened?

From:

crystalpyramid

Hmm. It might be amusing! Although possibly also disappointing if there's nothing to "open"? So it might depend a bit on how it ends up being packaged?

From:

conuly

They do not package it at all. You can mail almost anything just by writing an address on it and affixing a stamp, and several companies will mail potatoes for you. One does sweet potatoes. If you go to Hawaii, there's a post office where the postmaster offers free coconuts from his yard as a public service and allows you to mail coconuts.

From:

conuly

One star reviewers of picture books have no sense of humor and do not appreciate jokes. Jokes are silly. Silliness will not help their children get ahead in life.