Eighteen-month-old Kevin sidles across the kitchen with the sturdy board book Me and My Dad flapping from his dimpled fist. Insinuating his warm body under an aunt's arm, he points to a dancing bear.
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"He loves that book," his mother says.
Elsewhere in America, Kevin's 19-month-old cousin Clementine gnaws a hole a large rat might envy through her theoretically toddler-hardened board copy of Hop on Pop.
Is it possible that both these books -- one cuddled for its pictures and story, the other chewed -- was the right gift at the right time?
A timely question for December, when doting Santas will stand for an hour before shelves and shelves and shelves and shelves in the bookstore section where the children's picture-book spines squeeze in like sardines.
Santa will quiz booksellers, including the long-experienced Vicki Plant at WordsWorth Books & Co. in Little Rock: Is this too much for a 2-year-old? They'll troll the late-night depths of the internet, seeking that one wonderfully illustrated story they owned in mumble-mumble, only to singe their fingers on the price of out-of-print books:
$98.39 for The Wuggie Norple Story? Are you kidding me?
All this shopping grows from a faith that the right book will inspire a lifelong love of reading. But, perhaps, maybe -- probably -- included in one's considerations should be the chance -- however awful -- that the most charming picture book ever could wind up as a teething toy.
Turns out, there is a right time for even the best book.
"Your kids never hurt from holding books in their hands," says Sarah Razer Carnahan, middle and upper school librarian for Pulaski Academy in Little Rock. "Of course, people do need to know their child."
Her 5-year-old son Owen can be trusted with the fragile moving parts of pricey, out-of-print, large-format, fabulous pop-up books. But his mother is a librarian. And "we've lost a few books in our day," Razer Carnahan insists.
Based on her understanding of where kids who like to read come from, the toddler who cuts teeth on a book is on the road to literacy -- because there was a book in her environment.
Merely having one to hold is Step 1.
"What's so shocking is so many kids get to kindergarten and they don't even understand the direction to hold the book," Razer Carnahan says. "Teachers see kids in kindergarten who don't even understand that turning the page advances a story. ...
"They say the importance of what we call early literacy is even recognizing what the book is, knowing you turn the page right to left, knowing you hold it upright. That way when they get to preschool and kindergarten, books aren't foreign to them."
A comforting thought for a Santa worn down by searching for perfection and ready now to just grab any book and go home -- but still. Are there guidelines to help us avoid the gift of the unintended chew toy?
THE AGE OF 4
We could look it up. Publishers do make age recommendations, which Santa is of course free to dismiss if the world's most precious nephew is especially mature. A boy like Kevin, who has older sibling role models, can be expected to "get" how the book operates a little sooner than his older cousin Clementine, even though she's a girl, because she's an only child.
But in general, "there's 4 and above, and 4 and below," Razer Carnahan says.
"If the child is younger than 4, I would look at any book that's interactive. So it's a touch-and-feel book or has a mirror or has textured parts. We always like 'this part is rough, this part is soft' books for toddlers."
The most important part isn't the book but what happens because of it -- the sharing. So think about reading it aloud.
She likes rhyming text, because it's memorable and fun. But "I'm not a fan of a paragraph or more per page," she says. "Even for the best storyteller, it's long.
"The kids look at the pictures, and once they're done looking at the pictures, they want to turn the page."
The more type per page, the more animated the storyteller has to be. Razer Carnahan recently read The Book With No Words to a class of preschoolers, and even though she revised it on the fly to avoid saying the no-no word "butt," "they were glued to it, all the way through," she says. "I was surprised."
But she had to work it.
NEW AND BEAUTIFUL
With decades in bookshops behind her, Plant has a long list of published-in-the-past picture books she recommends without hesitation. Some of her favorite survivors of time's tests are:
• Jamberry by Bruce Degen (HarperFestival, 1995)
• Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg (Viking Kestrel Picture Books, 1999)
• We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury (Classic Board Books, 1997)
But some "stunning" books came out in 2016, she says, including ...
• There Is a Tribe of Kids by Lane Smith (Roaring Brook Press, ages 5 to 8)
"In my mind, it is the perfect blend of pictures and words," Plant says. "It's about this little boy who is trying to find a place to belong."
Each page has only a few words, but they include unusual collective nouns. He tries and fails to fit in among a sprinkle of lightning bugs, a smack of jellyfish, a turn of turtles, a parade of elephants, a pod of whales. ...
And it's funny. "There's one part where he's with the gorillas and the gorillas are making music, and you see the notes. But his notes are sour. And the gorillas turn around and they give him this look. ...
"He goes through all these animals, and then he's on a beach in the middle of the dark. When it becomes light again, he sees a trail of shells. He follows these shells, and there is a tribe of kids. He finds a place. He finds what he is like."
• They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel (Chronicle Books, ages 3 to 6)
You could see this book as a simple idea beautifully illustrated or a complicated idea simplified by beautiful illustrations. "It's about how people, dogs, birds, worms ... all these different groups ... perceive a cat. At the end, we see how the cat sees itself."
• A Child of Books by Sam Winston and Oliver Jeffers (Candlewick Press, age 4 and up): A little girl who comes from a land made of stories sails her simple raft across a sea of words to introduce a lonely boy to the wonder of books.
The illustrations make it literal. Plant says, "What's incredible is they build the landscape out of words from classic children's books. I think they use the text from 40 different books." Children can appreciate the adventure on different levels as they age.
• Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts (Harry N. Abrams, ages 5 to 7)
Ada is a classmate of Rosie Revere, Engineer (2013) and Iggy Peck, Architect (2007), whose goofy, rhyming adventures celebrate curiosity, science, knowledge. Ada was born curious and as soon as she escapes the crib, she sets about studying her world and leaving a trail of chaos.
• Are We There Yet? by Dan Santat (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, ages 4 to 7) During a marathon road trip to Grandma's birthday party, a boy gets bored ("This is taking forever."). Suddenly, a steam engine appears beside the car, and then a cowboy.
Following arrows, readers turn the book, even flipping it upside down and turning the pages from back to front, and meanwhile, the family goes backward in time.
"Everybody ends up on top of a T-rex, the car and all the characters," Plant says. The book course-corrects, and the car lands too far into the future. "They're all standing there going, 'Oh no, we missed the party.' Then they go back in time to the right place and of course end up at Grandma's."
• The Night Gardener by Terry and Eric Fan (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, ages 4 to 8)
Plant likes how the Fan brothers convey a complex story and the passage of time using a few words and heavily detailed, evocative drawings.
"When you open the book up, you see this shabby town, and the people are unhappy. There's an orphanage and you see a little boy in the window. You turn the page and it's night, and this man is doing topiaries. Every night he does another one.
"The little boy wants to see what's going on, so he sneaks out and finds him. The old man teaches him. As you're watching it, the town changes. It's the beauty of the topiaries. People clean up their yards, they're smiling.
"And then the winter comes and the leaves blow away so they're gone. But when spring comes, the little boy sneaks out and starts it all over again. It's dreamlike."
• Brave Little Finn by Jennifer and John Churchman (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, ages 8 to 12)
Illustrated in a combination of photography and graphic art, the sweet story of a sheltered lamb's introduction to the big, wide world is a sequel to 2015's The SheepOver. Both stories are based on semi-true events on the authors' farm in Vermont, where injured or sick lambs are tenderly anthropomorphised.
"A lot of people like to give children books with real animals," Plant says, "and these illustrations are stunning."
ActiveStyle on 12/19/2016