Last night, while at the home of some friends who are expecting their first baby any minute now, I came into contact with a certain baby book, That's Not My Bear, by Fiona Watt and Rachel Wells. I picked it up and read it cover to cover (all ten thick cardboard pages of it). It's one of those "touchy feely" books--each page says something to the effect of "That's not my bear--his nose is too rough," or "That's not my bear--his tongue is too prickly," accompanied by a picture of a bear with a bumpy nose or a prickly-velcro tongue, or shiny claws or fuzzy ears or whatever. Very cute.

Of course, after getting through with it, the intellectual in me felt the need to point out that there were two pandas and a koala included among the "bears" of this book. And everybody knows (well, they should know) that pandas and koalas aren't really bears; pandas are in the raccoon family, and koalas are marsupials--related more to kangaroos than to grizzlies. Many eyes were rolled at me for being so picky, but inside I thought to myself, "This is the baby's first book. Is it right to be teaching him falsehoods straight out of the womb? If you teach him right off that a panda is a bear, he's going to do poorly in biology class (or worse: grow up as a part of the ignorant masses who think pandas are bears, or that jellyfish are fish, or that pterodactyls are dinosaurs)."

Later, reflecting on the experience, I realized that it's pretty silly to think than a newborn infant will even care that there are representational depictions of anything--he'll probably even have to grow up a few months before he thinks the fuzzy ears are cool. He's just too young to learn any information on that cardboard page, so there's no need to worry that it contains vicious lies.

Of course, that led me to another train of thought: If, as is the case, infants don't glean any knowledge or even entertainment from the information contained in their books (surely, their value is in their bright colors and, in this case, fun textures), why do we pretend to give them information? There are baby books (and I mean infant books) that will purport to teach numbers, letters, farm animals*, or whatever, but in reality they do nothing of the sort. The pretty colors and tactile qualities are what's entertaining.

So why doesn't someone make a book that doesn't have any words or representational pictures--just splotches of bright colors, with perhaps a bit of velcro thrown in for touching? That's every bit as entertaining, and it doesn't pretentiously feign to be more than it is. Even better, I bet parents get bored reading inane "stories" like That's Not My Bear. Why not print words on the bright pictures that tell a story that would actually be interesting to the adult reading it? You could still read it aloud to the kid--he doesn't understand what you're saying when he's 3 weeks old, anyway (heck, even when he's a year old he doesn't understand much). But it would be more fun for the parents. At least it would be better than filling the child's head with cockamamie.

* Why the fascination with farm animals? Surely it's a remnant of our foregone agrarian culture--it used to be important to recognize a rooster or a pig. But come on: when was the last time you actually saw a real, live pig? I think the last time for me was like August 1996, in Brazil. Why don't we teach our kids about jungle animals, or local songbirds, or (now here's an idea) what is and is not a bear?