Book 31: Are You My Mother?

Book 31: Are You My Mother?, by P.D. Eastman.  Toddler/Preschool.

In honor of the quickly-approaching Mother's Day, I decided to take on this classic book.

Over the years, I'd read some pretty snide remarks about this particular book. Perhaps inflicting it on a seven- or eight-year-old child for the first time would be cruel, as it is simple and repetitive, without the quirky humor of Suess, but for a toddler, this book is perfect.

For one thing it is simple. The baby bird looks like a bird; the kitten looks like a kitten; the dog looks like a dog, and so on, and the mother looks like the baby bird. A toddler can spot the family resemblance. For another thing, it is repetitive. While I'm not a big fan of repetition in books that I read for my own enjoyment, I am a fan of it in toddler books. And so is my toddler. Repetition is predictable, and therefore, safe, to the very young "readers".