CHILDREN'S PUBLISHING Toys for tots: Touchable, teachable books finding fans

Getting a child to interact is what's important, one mom says.
By LINTON WEEKS
WASHINGTON POST
See the gift for baby!
"Is it a book?" Jane asks.
"Is it a toy?" Dick asks.
"Heck if I know!" Jane says.
Jane's right. It's hard to tell these days if that first little sparsely worded, multicolored object in Junior's hands is a piece of literature or a bath toy or a blankie or just another suckable, toss-off-the-highchair, three-dimensional drooled-upon thingamajig.
Baby books have gotten way weird. Today's bookstore shelves spill over with tot-oriented "toybooks" shaped like animals, insects and other things:
U"Teatime Piglet" by Steve Bland is a picture book that looks and sounds like a cell phone that rings when you punch it.
U"Ocean Animals" by Melanie Walsh is a pint-size board book that also serves as a handle for a water-filled teething ring.
U"My Ragged Bears Cuddly Book" by Paul Stickland is advertised as a book, a pillow and a teddy bear all rolled into one.
U"Book Buddy: A Child's First Book," published by Running Press -- with eyes, mouth, rectangular torso and arms and legs -- is actually a soft doll-sort-of-thing. It looks more like a refugee from a Muppet movie than a book. There is no real writing, just a few words and pictures here and there. "More educational than a toy and more cuddly than any board book, 'Book Buddy' is the perfect friend to introduce children to the world of reading!" reads the back of the box.
New this year
Just this year Disney's publishing wing, Hyperion, brought out a mirror-rattle-book called "My Favorite Colors" for Baby Einstein, another Disney company. "My Lunch Box," illustrated by Bob Filipowich, is a Tote-Along Soft-Shapes book disguised as a lunch box. Dorling Kindersley published a baby-rattle book, "On the Move" by Linda Esposito. And Intervisual Books unveiled "Apple," a plush red book posing as a huge softcover piece of fruit.
Some toybooks "are really, really fun. Some are contrived," says Jewell Stoddard, who runs the children's section at Washington bookstore Politics & amp; Prose. But "parents should use some restraints. It's important to make the connection of ideas and books and stories and language. You don't want the language to get lost in the toy activity."
Nicki Geifman, 32, of Rockville, Md., started with toybooks to teach her children to read. "Pat the Bunny," by Dorothy Kunhardt, was a favorite, says Geifman, who was visiting a suburban Washington bookstore recently with her two young children.
"Doing anything with your children that's interactive is beneficial," Geifman says.
A different view
Not everyone is completely sold on toybooks, however. "Oh, 'Pat the Bunny' might be OK for a 1-year-old, but basically books are books and toys are toys and never the twain should meet," wrote Daniel Menaker in the New York Times in 1991. "It seems to me a good idea to encourage children ... to understand that books are for holding and looking at or reading, not playing with. My guess is that there's some part of the brain -- the Node of Bibliophilia or some such -- that needs prompt and constant stimulation to make all its little synaptic connections, so that the adults that children tend to become will have available the great pleasure that only reading can bring."
Today Menaker is editor in chief of Random House. "I think you can have it both ways," he says. "But I would stick by the idea that books as books, not playthings, are essential to the intellectual development of any child."
The fusion, and confusion, started with the 1940 publication of "Pat the Bunny," the pink and blue book with the fluffy bunny on the cover and the scratch-and-sniff flowers and tinfoil mirror and sandpaper for Daddy's scratchy beard. The book, written for Kunhardt's 3-year-old daughter Edith, became a sweet-smelling success.
"Dorothy felt that there was more to books than just words on paper," according to the Random House Web site, "and that added elements could increase a child's love for reading and learning."
By most standards, Kunhardt has won. "Pat the Bunny" has sold more than 7 million copies. Edith eventually picked up the banner, with "Pat the Cat" in 1984, "Pat the Puppy" in 1991 and "Pat the Pony" in 1997.
Toybooks are a growing part of children's publishing, which, Publishers Weekly reports, is a $1.75 billion annual industry.
Something to hold
Brod Bagert, a New Orleans poet and co-author of the Department of Education's publication "Helping Your Child Learn to Read," believes "it's a good idea to have kids sit down and hold something in their hands."
If you give a 1-year-old a book in the shape of a bunny, Bagert says, as that child becomes more developmentally ready to read, he can move to a 16-page picture book, then a 32-page book with more words, and so on. "This is still a far cry from the thousand-page 'Don Quixote,' which we hope they eventually read," he says, "but they have to work their way up.
"Is it better to give them a toy and not a book? I don't think so," he says. "I think it's better to give them a toy that is a book."
Too often these days, he says, reading in the classroom is a boring proposition. "Once a child gets the idea that reading is work, he'll stop reading," Bagert says. "A book is a plaything. Books are fun. Books are a joy."