January 1, 2017
This board book attempts to introduce babies to nuclear physics; its companion volume does the same with aerodynamics.A white baby in overalls is depicted building a tower with blocks. Moving right along, Spiro explains that nature also likes to build, and while baby builds with blocks, nature builds with quarks. So far so good, but now comes the confounding part. A quark is an elementary particle and a fundamental constituent of matter, but explaining it to a baby is no elementary matter. How does one explain something that's not directly observed to young children developmentally not ready for abstraction? Conceivably, babies could learn to parrot the explanation of a quark, making their parents very proud and eager to show off their young prodigies, yet they would have absolutely no understanding of what they are saying. The companion volume to this book, Baby Loves Aerospace Engineering! is no less absurd in its subject matter. Though not as abstract, an understanding of aerodynamics does require a greater experience of the world than babies bring to the table. There will be time enough for children to learn, experience, and understand these concepts when they are a little older; meanwhile, what happened to head, shoulders, knees, and toes? Really? (Board book. 2-4)
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