If Simon could write a book report, his for Happy Baby Things That Go might read something like this:
“Bus. This the bus. The bus? Yeah, the bus. Whas zis? Bu-pu? Ooooh. The bus.”
There’s more going on here than this report may demonstrate. Owing to his emerging fascination with all things wheeled, I picked up Happy Baby Things That Go at Borders Sunday night. I knew he’d like it, but I was and am truly delighted at how much he likes it.
His first order of business was to frantically turn pages looking for anything bus-like, to emphatically point to all these vehicles, and to emphatically proclaim “the bus” with a slight lisp at the sight of all of them. Once he calmed down, he began flipping between the inside cover page, where miniature pictures are located, to the page where each miniature’s respective full-size counterpart was located. He’d point to the small tram, call out “the bus!”, then flip to the main page in the book, point to the bigger tram, and explain that it, too, was “the bus.”
His second order of business was figuring out what all these non-bus buses were. Like the big passenger airplane. “The bus?” “No, honey, that’s an airplane.” Simon now calls this the “bu-pu”, either his attempt at saying “airplane” or “Airbus”, but we’re thinking he doesn’t know about brand names just yet. And what about the farm bus (tractor), or the sea bus (boat), or the rotorcraft bus (helicopter)? Matt and I easily spent thirty minutes saying the name of each item over and over and over again.
By the end of the evening, Simon could point to the rocket, the airplane, the motorcycle, the helicopter, and-of course-the bus when asked. Two days later the sight of the book still brightens his eyes and deepens his dimples, to say nothing for how much it makes Matt and me smile.