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Books for babies and toddlers are pretty much all the same: cute drawings and simple sentences. On some level, they're all goofy and inane. There's no accountin
by heydenberk 5y ago
Books for babies and toddlers are pretty much all the same: cute drawings and simple sentences. On some level, they're all goofy and inane. There's no accounting for taste to be sure, but I am especially baffled why some of these books grow tiresome after two read-throughs, while you are delighted to see your toddler reach for certain books again and again. Eric Carle's books are all in the latter camp for me. The illustrations are beautiful, of course, but something about the stupidly simple prose and narrative just ineffably works. I'm grateful to him.
- garyrob 5y agoI agree. I read his books, especially that one, to each of my kids, and still have very fond memories
- danbolt 5y agoI've heard that a lot of children's media often looks to help encourage pattern recognition (eg: counting the Very Hungry Caterpillar's foods or the structure of a Blue's Clues episode), but I don't know how true that is.
- NoNotTheDuo 5y agoI've heard a corollary to this. Kids often love to watch/read the same thing because they recognize the pattern and know what is coming up next. This gives them comfort and a routine.
- lfowles 5y agoAs an adult I love recognizing the patterns and anticipating what's coming next! The only difference is the patterns get more complex :)
- ftio 5y agoI echo all of this, including in appreciation of Carle's work. Despite the simple language, there's a sophistication and depth to the best children's books that mediocre ones lack. My favorite to read to my little guys is _This is Not My Hat_ by Jon Klassen, which is one of the funniest, most subtle ones we've come across.
- citizenkeen 5y agoSam and Dave Dig a Hole is hilarious for the kid and absolutely terrifying for the parent.
- jbrooksuk 5y agoIt's so good to see Jon Klassen getting recognition on HN! His books are superb! Short, sweet and extremely funny :D
- agentwiggles 5y agoJon Klassen is great! Simple yet beautiful art and stories that are fun for both the parents and the kids. I love the final line of This Is Not My Hat, which works on two levels: "Nobody will ever find me."
- peterstensmyr 5y agoHighly recommend “the wolf, the duck, and the mouse” which is written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen. Absurd and funny.
- person22 5y agoAdding to the recommended books: 'Bats at the Beach' by Brian Lies. My kids never got tired of me reading it and I never got tired of reading it. They loved that book. The illustrations are extremely well done. Who would draw bats wearing floaties?
- depsypher 5y agoIt can be surprisingly hard to find children's books that tell a story with a beginning, middle and end, and with writing that is engaging. I distinctly remember one day Skyping with my mother telling her how hard it was to find good kids books and using "A Sick Day for Amos McGee" as an example of a good one. I recited a few lines to demonstrate the language, "Every day when his alarm clock clanged Amos swung his legs out of bed and swapped his pajamas for a fresh-pressed uniform"... my daughter, to my surprise (not yet old enough to talk at the time) rushed into the other room to fetch the book.
- meristohm 5y agoSome books I’m willing to read repeatedly: I Am A Bunny, and I Am A Mouse, both by Ole Risom and illustrated by Richard Scarry and John P. Miller, respectively, in a realistic style, as if they actually made the time to observe the plants and animals; Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown; Stack the Cats, by Susan Ghahremani; and Bear and Wolf, by Daniel Salmieri. The latter is my favorite so far because of this line, among others: “Bear and Wolf walked through the quietly falling snow, using their eyes, and ears, and noses to take in the snowy woods.” Bear is female, Wolf is male, and they are at home in the cold, as we can be if we allow ourselves to acclimate. They explore together, go they separate ways, and meet again in late spring.
- navbaker 5y agoOn the page in Goodnight Moon where the mouse is peeking out from behind the bowl full of mush, our 3-year old has started shouting at it "NO NO YOUNG MOUSE, GET AWAY FROM MY MUSH!!!" Makes me laugh every time.
- bkandel 5y agoI love the book, but honestly who sleeps with a bowl of oatmeal on their nightstand?! Never understood that.
- thanatos519 5y agoWho says "Goodnight nobody?"
- croutonwagon 5y agoMy wife has a masters in reading and language arts in early childhood education. Which means shes also a LOT better at reading to the kids than me. What i never realized was that a LOT of these books, Eric Carles are in that camp, are using words chosen to teach kids basic language skills and sentence formation. The ones that dont really employ a lot of those learning mechanisms, seem to be the ones that we grow tired of quickly and hit the back of the stack.. Im sure Nostalgia is part of it too. Dr. Suess is similar and very heavy on sounds/aliteration. But you would be surprised to know that many of his books actually use very few words. Like Green Eggs and Ham is like 50 pages of sentence after sentence but only uses like 50 words total or something like that (i could be wrong, its one of the most famous ones that like that). Honestly when I read to my young kids, i would get tired of the same books over and over and would just kinda make up the story. Now that my kids are learning to actually read, I dont do that anymore.
- ska 5y ago> What i never realized was that a LOT of these books, This is part of a broader phenomenon, where most things are more complicated than you first think when you dig into it. This leads some people to assume work in areas they don't understand is easy.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- csours 5y agoI constantly assume that parts of my own job are easier than they turn out to be. 'That should only take 30 minutes' - winds up taking 2 calendar weeks.
- croutonwagon 5y agoI have to typically impress in my first line support guys that “if you don’t want people to think your job is simple, then you shouldn’t assume the same of them” Heck I get people that think MY job is just clicking next on installers, there are entire swaths of things we do that others simply aren’t aware of because it’s transparent to them. I even had one lady question how much I made based on that very assumption. (She’s not a very nice person in general anyway)
- chasd00 5y agofor me, it was much easier to read books like Little Blue Truck or Goodnight Moon night after night to my kids because they rhyme. I could memorize the poetry and read it as my boys went to sleep while half-asleep myself.
- IggleSniggle 5y agoThis one line about hubris enters my thoughts unprovoked, an internal reproach, on occasion: -------- He saw a puddle and he tried to swerve-- Into the mud rolled the big fat truck, and his big important wheels got STUCK
- bambax 5y agoMy kids had a book about a wolf who made soup with a stone, "Une soupe aux caillou". The wolf travels to other animals' homes; the animals are afraid at first, but they let him in because he says he only wants to make soup. He comes in, boils water in a big pot, puts his stone in. The animals want to help with the soup, and so they suggest other ingredients. The wolf says "well, sure, you can add that if you want". They drink the soup together. Then the wolf gets up, takes his stone back from the pot, and leaves. The process repeats for 8 or 10 different animals, and that's it. It's a fantastic book. We must have read it hundreds of times.
- quadrangle 5y agoI don't like this idea of grouping them all as similar. There's a huge range of toddler-focused books, some are great, some are awful, most are in-between. Brown Bear, Brown Bear from Carle himself is mediocre junk. It's just colors and animals, and has no character, no narrative, no arc. The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar is an amazing, astounding masterpiece. It is usually printed with a sort of dynamic tactical approach with different page sizes, holes in the pages, the story has a real arc, it teaches biology, it carefully works in numbers and days of the week and the idea of time frame… it's a true stand-out. Most of Carle's stuff is somewhere in the middle, though he has a few other superb ones. Just like art for older audiences, there really is a range. You could say that all movies are the same: people having conflicts and doing stuff. On some level, they're all dramatic and simplistic. It's not mere taste. What makes a great book or movie for any age is not total relativism.
- jacobolus 5y agoBrown Bear, Brown Bear is an excellent book for very young children (say, under 2 years old). It’s not a deep book, but it is not trying to be. It has attractive clear illustrations of one animal per page, a simple repeating structure with only a few new words each page, nice rhyme/meter. Its structure involves repeatedly anticipating the next animal, which makes it easy to memorize. It is a book my kids enjoyed “reading” aloud to themselves at age 1.5–2 before they could fully remember the content of more complicated picture books. * * * Of course, this isn’t the only type of book small kids should be listening to, and in the genre of extremely simple picture books there is a lot of abject garbage.
- regandersong 5y agoLike the other commenter I also thought the book was a dud and had nothing going on. But the "a teacher is what I see" finally clicked that series' large pictures were designed to communicate at distance. When my 8 month old wants to grab everything and not settle down to sleep, I can read her that book while she's in the crib and the calming cadence does its work. Will be fun to see her read it like your kids one day.
- WalterBright 5y agoI enjoy Winnie the Pooh as much today as when I was 6. But for different reasons. Today I enjoy the sly humor in it. It takes real talent to appeal to both young and old. The early Spongebob cartoons were like that, Bugs Bunny, and the early seasons of The Simpsons
- noneeeed 5y agoThis is very true. I have the same response to many (but not all) Julia Donaldson books. I could happily read the Snail and the Whale every night to my kids. My son loved them all, but for some reason my daughter never took to them and it's always made me a bit sad that I don't get to read them to her.