The Cow Says, "Moo!"

How did we decide what is important for babies to know? And who decided it? I know it wasn’t me, and I know it wasn’t recently because my parenting of toddlers has spanned a generation and the stuff we taught when Keilana was little is still on the kid menu today. Some of the things make sense--colors, letters, numbers--but others leave a little more mystery to be explained. For instance, why are dinosaurs such a popular small people topic? I get cuddly things like teddy bears and fuzzy blankies, but when did sauruses of all kinds--prickly, spiny, scaly--become the go-to place for kids’ books? And why things that babies could never wrap their heads around or very few people really use anymore--like trains? Is it just because they fascinate us? Like I said, strange choices. But perhaps one of the most frequently occurring, but mystifying, topics that every baby in the know must know is animal sounds. What possible use could a baby, any baby anywhere, have for knowing what an elephant “says”? Or a goat? Or, heck, even a cat or a cow? But learn them they do and we measure how well things are going in baby learning land by how many they know and when. It’s funny, even the heavy hitters are in on the plot. In Eric Carle’s My Very First Book of Animal Sounds, all the regulars are present and accounted for. And guess who got the coveted cover shot? Yep, you guessed it--the elephant.

http://www.amazon.com/Very-First-Book-Animal-Sounds/dp/0399246487

http://www.eric-carle.com/home.html