Just a little rant here–Martha Parravano and I are preparing a talk for next week’s Fostering Lifelong Learners conference in Ohio, and the other day we visited the Children’s Book Shop for some titles we wanted to share but couldn’t find in the office.  I was struck by the number of picture book titles for four-to-six-year-olds reissued in board book format. Right now I’m looking at a new board book edition of Samantha Berger and Dan Santat’s Crankenstein. For Pete’s sake, WHY? It’s a terrific book, but it’s not for kids who are still drooling and dripping and clueless about sharp corners. Or Liz Garton Scanlon and Marla Frazee’s All the World–a beautiful book but so not for babies. Terri Schmitz pointed out to me a concurrent trend: baby-appropriate picture books that were smartly resized and formatted for baby hands that have subsequently been blown up–the “oversized board book edition” of Goodnight, Gorilla is bigger than the original picture book and weighs two pounds. It’s been positively weaponized.

This has been going on for twenty years, and I’m guessing it’s because books for babies are easier to sell than are picture books for older kids. But I worry that we’re just trying to delay the inevitable moment of teaching kids how to read without spitting up.

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