BabyLit books: You won’t want to put your eye out!

As a lifelong book geek, I get so pumped when I meet a favorite author. This is a feeling a lot of people reserve for fast cars or winning lots of money or meeting the Doctor. (I’ve been a fan of the blue box since my tween years, don’t get me wrong… it’s just I’d rather visit book festivals than the universe.) I have a small collection of favorite books that I boxed and labelled “old friends” during my last move- much to my husband’s consternation, but I had to distinguish it from all the other many, many… MANY boxes labelled “books,” didn’t I? My parents and my only sibling were not even a LITTLE surprised to find that this box contained books.

I mention all this so you will understand when I say that I love that my kids adore books, but that I find many children’s books deeply disappointing. Thanks to our family mottoes- Anything Worth Doing is Worth Overdoing, followed closely by You Can’t Have Too Many Books- I have plenty of chances to wallow in that disappointment. Particularly since, unlike adults, who can pick up a pulp paperback, read it once, and pass it on to the next person who needs to kill a few hours, kids want to read their disappointing children’s books over and over and over and over again. I know there’s a developmental point to this and that any hour spent exposed to the written word helps with literacy, but I have to confess that there are a few titles that are so mind numbing I just cannot care about any of that. So, hip hip HOORAY for any book that I feel actually qualifies as a well written children’s book.

When I received the BabyLit Halloween Pack in exchange for my honest review, it came with a cute and sturdy Dracula tote, four adorable buttons, and two board books. One is a counting book and one is a body parts book. Two categories of toddler literature that rank high on the repetitive brain injury casualty lists. They’re right up there with alphabet books. “Sure, honey, I’d love to read that to you again but unfortunately, I’ve gone blind. Good thing I memorized it about 75 repetitions ago…” Now, I cannot promise that your toddler will not want to read these over and over until your ocular nerve gives out. Actually, they probably will, because they’re totally adorable, but we’re talking about YOU here. So, while I can’t promise you won’t be asked to read these way too much, I CAN promise you that we have finally found some board books that don’t insult our intelligence. You don’t have to be quite as enchanted by books as I am to love the idea that the character in your child’s body parts book is reading Paradise Lost. And you probably named your kid after one of the characters in Dracula, so you’re going to be tickled at that one, too.

Being much more a book nerd than an art one, I can’t tell you exactly why I like the illustrations so much. But I do. They’re adorable and the kids will pry these Frankenstein buttons out of my cold, dead hands. Because I’ll be wearing them. The tote bag? Also totally mine. They can have the books and I’m letting them play the Build and Play Frankenstein app. Oh yes, there’s also an app. Your kiddo will be able to do some of that trance causing repetition with the swipe of a finger and give Mommy a break. I’m not sure what the exact age bracket is for this game, but my 3 and 7 year olds both enjoy it… so at least 3-7. Here’s what one kid thought:

Check in at the end of the week, because BabyLit has agreed to give away a Halloween Pack to one of you!