Reading to Karina

When Karina got The Big Red Barn for Christmas, I initially didn't pull it out for a while, thinking the number of pages and words would be too much for her (she generally likes books about the length of Sandra Boynton's and starts wanting to close the book and start a new one if they're much longer than that). One day I pulled it out before a nap, and she was surprisingly into it.

Now it's our naptime go-to book. If I have a bunch of books on the lounge chair where I read to her before nap, she'll always pick The Big Red Barn, and if I start reading something else, she'll usually close it or be really restless until I switch. It's funny, because she's not been as big a fan of Goodnight, Moon, though she's starting to warm to it now as well.

I think she likes the very rhythmic lines in the book, as well as the animal pictures (though I point to every animal, she hasn't started connecting them very much yet - she still tends to call all people and animals "baby" if she talks about them at all). I've noticed that books with just individual words or non-rhythmic lines don't tend to hold her interest as much as rhythmic ones. It's worth noting that her other favorite author, Boynton, also uses poetic meter and rhyme in the text.

I've started reading her poetry and verse when I think about (I'm not much of a poetry person so I have to actively remember to do it), but she still gravitates back to The Big Red Barn. The combination of animals and soothing verse is utterly winning, especially right before a nap, although it's also a favorite for her to flip through on her own when she's awake.