A trip to the New York Public Library's Children's Books exhibit

A trip to this magnificent edifice (now named after financier Stephen A. Schwarzman) has always been special, but never more significant to me than when it involves children and reading.  Some of my fondest memories are of my mother reading to me and the pleasurable hours I spent snuggled up with and reading to my own child. Although we visited our local branch often, our visit to the 42nd Street library was mainly to visit the map room, one of the most visually interesting rooms for a child in that building.  If you haven't been to the main library recently, I highly recommend you go see the current exhibit.
 
From now until March 23, 2014 the library has on display a sympathetic exhibit...a comprehensive homage to children's books. On display are many of the books that you or your children read while growing up, along with photographs of some of the authors or their subjects, personal letters, interactive touch screens and plenty of loose books or comics that you can pick up and read.  Here you'll find Mary Poppins, a video of Eric Carle showing how he made "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," "Fun with Dick and Jane," "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," a sky-high tower of books (including Anne Frank's diary) that were once censored,  Edward Stratemeyer's Bobbsey Twins/Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys, L. Frank Baum's Oz series, "Charlotte's Web," Peter Rabbit/Beatrix Potter, "Goodnight, Moon" (which has a life-sized replica of the great green room from the book, seen below).

Take a random walk through the interesting arrangement of galleries.  Each book or genre or famous author has its own vignette of a space.  One of my personal favorites was a gigantic gift box that you can enter, with a single book prominently displayed: a Little Golden Book that was, in fact, given to my son as a gift -- "The Poky Little Puppy."

Although I visit the Bank Street College of Education several days a year (to display Discovery Toys), I had no idea how influential it was in the early days of picture books. Its founder, Lucy Sprague Mitchell observed that children live in a world largely based on their immediate surroundings and their development as healthy, socially and emotionally secure "whole children" was fundamental.  Books like "Goodnight Moon" and the Steichen's "The First Picture Book" are based on that.

Below the set of unit blocks is a photograph by Edward Steichen's based on those blocks.  The card next to the blocks explains that nearly 100 years ago Caroline Pratt, founder of City and Country School in Greenwich Village (and collaborator with Lucy Sprague Mitchell in the Bureau of Educational Experiences), invented unit blocks like these to provide "open-ended play." (Incidentally, that's the term Lane Nemeth used for her Discovery Toys...meaning there's no right way or wrong way to play with these materials, and no age limit: as a child ages they find new uses.) This same concept inspired him to leave the left-hand page blank so grown-up and child together could fill in their own dialogue.

 






In the 1940s Pooh author A. A. Milne donated the collection of original Winnie-the-Pooh dolls (including Pooh's friends Kanga, Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet) to the American publisher E. P. Dutton. The dolls were then donated to the library in 1988 and were displayed behind bulletproof glass in the Children’s Reading Room at the Donnell branch in Rockefeller Center.

If you've been wondering what happened to the beloved Winnie-the-Pooh dolls since the Donnell Library Center closed in August 2008, you have a chance to see them again in this exhibit.

Before you go, I highly recommend reading Edward Rothstein's review,"Bedtime With Puritans and Wild Things--Public Library’s ‘ABC of It’ Looks at Children’s Books."

Windows of Opportunity

Scientific research has shown that there are specific time periods early in a child's life (referred to as the "windows of opportunity") when many important brain connections are set for life. It's the time frame when certain connections take place most effectively in the brain: when we learn to walk, when we learn a second language, when we learn mathematical concepts, and so on. If you fail to learn these things during their critical period, you can still learn them later, but, for example, you won't have the authentic French accent if you learn to speak French at age 20, instead of at age 2, when the window is still open. You can learn to walk if you were in a total body cast at age 1, but you are likely to not have a natural gait.

Everything young babies and children are learning and are exposed to helps generate connections in the wiring of their brains. The more connections there are, the more successful children can be at developing new skills over time.

This impacts social skills as well as cognitive and motor skills, as described in Denise Quinlan's blog entry Positive Relationships - Pillar or Foundation of the House of Well-being? She asserts that "Children who are secure in their primary relationships are more likely to explore and so learn more about their surroundings, thereby building greater knowledge and resources."

One commenter to her blog, Udayan, remarks, "There have been documented cases of children who have somehow survived alone without parents or any other people, and have been discovered at some point in middle childhood. Their development in all areas, such as language, cognition, emotions, social skills, etc., are naturally grossly underdeveloped, and what is worse, having missed critical periods in brain development in which they should have been developing in interaction with others, they were never able to develop their human capacities to a level that approaches those who have been raised from infancy in human communities."

The Discovery Toys tag line teach.play.inspire. reminds us to "feed" our children healthy toys (as opposed to "junk food toys") that make every moment a playful brain-wiring opportunity. That's why so many moms who grew up on these toys themselves are now introducing them to the next generation.

Literacy for children

What is literacy?

It's the ability to communicate in a variety of forms: reading, writing, listening, speaking, thinking.

Many parents don't realize that when a child works a puzzle or assembles a sequence of parts, he's learning visual discrimination (how things look alike or different), a fundamental concept in being able to differentiate one string of letters (a word) from another.

Stacking toys, like Measure Up Cups, or My Busy Day teach about sequencing...a progression from small to large.

Lacing/threading toys like Giant Pegboard or Shapes and Laces, work on fine motor skills that build the muscles that will soon develop the ability to hold a pencil.

Sorting toys like Sunshine Market or Place and Trace also help with eye-hand coordination, how the eyes and hands work together.

Patterning toys like Playful Patterns help children recognize and analyze patterns in words like endings or prefixes.

All of this will be helpful to a child learning to read.

It's never too soon to get started. Even holding the youngest child on your lap for a short reading session sets up a positive association with being read to. They can learn about how a book opens, that it must be held right side up, that we read from left to right, that the symbols on the page have a meaning.

You will probably want to have a home library, one that includes a variety of genres, from rhyming books to picture books, to activity books, story books, reference books. There should be a range of authors with different writing styles and an array of illustrators. Even the font styles should vary so that g is still recognized as g.

Baby board books like Frog's Friends, Ladybug's Lesson and Baby Bear's Bedtime, and soft books like Animal Baby and Busy Baby, have interesting textures to hold baby's attention.

Once Upon a Time and My First Fairy Tales are two storybooks, and there's the What am I? series of non-fiction with interesting die-cut pages in our reference section.

We also have CDs to cultivate good listening skills, like Sounds Like Fun and Bilingual Songs -English/Spanish.

Refer to my prior article on reading aloud to your child for 15 minutes a day. It is one of the best things you can do for your child.

How to make a smarter child

With educational toys, of course! All kidding aside, information enters the brain through the five senses, making the use of multi-sensory toys beneficial to hardy brain development. Products like a bright- colored, textured ball that squeaks and has a scent (Tangiball) or building blocks that double as rattles (EZ Blocks) help to wire the brain's neurons and dendrites, the pathways in the brain. This is particularly true during the earliest months and years of a child's life when the changes in the brain are most dramatic.

There are windows of opportunity for certain skills to be cultivated (e.g. learning a second language without a foreign accent needs to take place before a child turns 9). A child who is in a body cast when the window of opportunity is open for learning to walk, may eventually walk, but will not likely have a natural gait.

My advice: expose a child to as many different situations and stimuli as possible, and read to them every day.

List of Hot Topics

DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES
How to Host a DT Baby Shower
The Importance of Touch
Toddler's 2nd Year
Language Development: Banana-fana-fofana


PLAY/ TOYS
Why is Play Important?
Toy Play in Early Childhood
Healthy Play Diet pyramid
Made in China
Toy Safety
Books in the Home
Measure Up Cups video
25 Uses for Boomerings
Pentominoes
Electronic Toys instead of Parents?
Recipe for Modeling Dough


EDUCATION
Nobel Prize Winner on Early Childhood
When to learn a Second Language
Obama's Early Learning Challenge Fund


PARENTING
Sleep Begets Sleep
Healthy Happy Zzzzz
No Parent Left Behind
Journal of Economic Perspectives:Parental time
Teaching Kids about Money
Why have a home-based Business?
Raising decent, happy solid-citizens
Character Education
Tips from Real Parents
Single Mom
Single Mom, part 2

DISCOVERY TOYS
Meet Discovery Toys
Why Start a Discovery Toys business?
How to start a DT business?
How to order Discovery Toys