The eNotes Blog Cutting Teeth onLiterature

Cutting Teeth onLiterature In the perennial push to make new and over-achieving parents as paranoid as possible comes this new line of classics designed for you guessed it babies.  Baby Einstein? Pffft. Thats for all those poor children born in the last century. And besides, the claims that listening to classical music will enhance young _____________________ s (insert nom-du-jour here) intelligence proved false. So false, in fact, that consumers were refunded their money. But, like I said, it is now the twenty-first century and things are different. Now we have Baby Lit. The first two titles to be released, in board book form, are Pride and Prejudice and Romeo and Juliet. They are condensed to, I am assuming, handsome-boys-and-pretty-girls-dressed-in-primary-colors-and-smiling-a-lot. Because otherwise, a boiled-down-to-bare-essentials of Romeo and Juliet would involve a lot of yucky stabbiness. And I dont care how precocious your toddler is, two-year-olds simply cannot reliably comment on the politics of primogeniture. I have two children, aged 14 and 11, who are now top-notch readers. But when they were 0-3 years, the target audience for Baby Lit, they primarily used their board books for nomming purposes, and all were equal opportunity in the drool rotation: happy spoon, pat-able bunnies, and dump truck stories alike.  So go ahead, get a few Baby Lit titles for your diaper bag. It couldnt hurt and it just might make that tooth come through.