My Real Life

We like books.

It’s a simple fact.

And so, we spend an enormous amount of time reading books, whether we are 40, 11, 8, 6 or 1.

Our hope for the books we read to our 1 year old is that they might help him make some kind of contextual sense of the world around him.

That they might help him learn.

So, imagine my disappointment when I opened up this book to share with Tiny.

I’ll admit…I didn’t actually browse through it when I bought it.

It said both “John Deere” and “ABC” on the cover.

Around here, either one of those terms makes a book golden.

Saturday night was the first night that Tiny was going to bed without being nursed to sleep.

It was time, and although I wasn’t ready, I thought he might be.

However, I wasn’t just going to dump him in his crib.

We started the ritual we have with the other monkeys, which is books, songs, then bed.

I picked this book out of his bookcase, as we hadn’t cracked the cover on this one yet.

We sat in his rocker and I opened and began to read.

First page went by just fine.

He was pointing at things, I was reading, there was learning going on.

(Okay, in MY mind, there was learning going on.)

Then we turned the page.

Farm.

Okay…I can get on board with that picture to describe the word.

However, while I realize this is a book manufactured by John Deere who has a product to sell, my guess is that the majority of children who will read this book will not make the connection between the letter “G” and this farm machine.

Yes, it happens to be called a “Gator” but, really?  There was nothing else on a farm that started with the letter “G”?

Like, maybe a Gate?

We moved on.

I was somewhat stopped by the picture of “Ice Cream” on the opposite page, but I let it go.

Not really farming terminology, but my Grandma grew up on a farm, and I visited many times as a kid.

There WAS ice cream.

So, okay.

However, the next page made me pause, once again.

I see a barn AND a silo, and if I’m a little one, I’m focusing on the bigger part of the picture which ain’t the silo.

They couldn’t just put a picture of a lone silo in there?

Would that have been so difficult?

Here’s the one that really got me going, though.

Really?

Udder?

You can barely see the udder!

That girl is barely a A-cup.

I’m not sure how this is a picture of an Udder.

I think we all know who will be to blame when hundreds of kids go to nursery school, and when asked “What sound does this animal make?” call out “Squirt! Squirt!”

It was udder-ly ridiculous.

I’m sorry.

So sorry.

I couldn’t resist.

Finally, we came to “X.”

It was at this point that I realized the author, (and I use that term in the loosest sense of the word), wasn’t even trying.

It even took me a minute to figure out that it wasn’t the row of doors that was important in the picture.

It was the design of the “X” ON the door that mattered.

Whatever.

Lessons learned:

1.  Look at the pictures in a picture book before you buy it.

2.  Forget the whole novel writing gig.  Apparently anyone can publish a picture book of ABC’s.

3.  Tiny is only 1.  He probably wasn’t going to learn anything from that book anyway, so I should just calm down and not have an udder about it.