From: Maia <maia>
Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 12:27:43 -0400

A goodly percentage of the board books I have seen have no real text at all, instead, they have pictures (often photographs) of
_things_, sometimes as many as twenty on a page. And they are ugly. They are different from Hoban's or <Black on White>, which encourage shape recognition and other visual exploration -- instead, they are more like frozen tv.

Which makes me wonder, are these books bought by parents who don't read to their kids and so don't see the need for words? Or by parents who don't read themselves? Are these books given to children to amuse them in independent play, rather than in sharing time?

I admit that it offends me when I see the number of stupid board books on the shelves. Of regular picture books there are plenty dull or stupid too, but there are still more wonderful books than we can afford. With board books, we buy everything that we like and that we think that our daughter will like, and still, we're scrounging. I find this depressing -- if board books are designed to be our children's first introduction to books, then why are we giving them "Cheerios" titles?...

I also wonder sometimes why picture books that would be so perfect as board books never make it into this format. Are board books considered less of an accomplishment, or do they make less money, or do books in board format then get written out (so to speak) for the regular picture book set?

Maia

-maia at littlefolktales.org www.littlefolktales.org the Spirited Review: www.littlefolktales.org/reviews.html
Received on Sat 27 May 2000 11:27:43 AM CDT