Brighter Minds books
This post is a solicited review.
Dawn at This Woman’s Work is trying to make some money by setting up, Get Them Blogging, a database of bloggers who are willing to receive samples to review. I signed on a few months ago, both to support Dawn and because I like to do book reviews, and a couple of weeks ago I got my first pitch, from Brighter Minds Media. They asked me how old my kids are, and the next week my husband called me at work to say that I had gotten a huge box.
The boys were very excited when I told them that the box had stuff for them. We opened it up, and went through it. The books were attractive and well-designed, if a little too overtly educational for my taste. D immediately grabbed the lift-a-flap alphabet book and wanted to see what was behind all the flaps, but lost interest as soon as he had seen them all. I liked the idea of the puppet built into the book, but was less thrilled to discover that it had an electronic voice. (We may pass it on to my nephew as revenge for all the noisy toys my brother has given the boys in the past.) When N is starting to learn his letters, we may break out the alphabet book that encourages finger tracing. Overall, I’d rate the books a B- there’s nothing objectionable about them, but nothing that made them stand out as books I’d want to read over and over again.
The package also had two computer games. D quickly grabbed the Land Before Time game, and I gave Caillou’s magic playhouse to N. D’s had practice with computer games before, and was soon navigating around the game. His favorite part was probably the dinosaur pinball game. He’s played it a once or twice since. I think that because there’s not an obvious goal that you’re supposed to achieve, he’s not drawn back to it as much as he is to games where he can see that he’s making progress.
N has only played games where something happens no matter what you hit, and so he struggled a bit to figure out his game. The box says that it’s for 2-6, but I find it hard to imagine that a 2 year old could manage the mouse well enough to play; N can do the sub-games where the object you’re clicking stays still, but not the ones where it moves. He’s also never watched the tv show, and so doesn’t quite get the video clips that you "win" when you solve a game. But he loves the way Caillou nods or shakes his head and says yes or no when you move the cursor over the right. He’s asked to play it again almost every day.
On a somewhat related note, I agree that the Baby Einstein reference in the state of the union address was odd.
January 24th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Hmm, maybe she’s a big Republican donor? It was weird, you’re right–several of my co-workers were talking about it today.
January 25th, 2007 at 8:34 am
On conservative talk radio I have listened to alot of criticism over how Pelosi and some Democratic women politicians are trying to remarket themselves as mother and pro family – due to Pelosi having all the grandchildren around her when she became moved up in Congress. Could the Baby Einstein mention be in retaliation? Republicans reminding the public who is profamily? Regardless of how educational Baby Einstein is, I think it was a disgusting reminder of how much is marketed for children. This is such a high contrast to the recommendations that pediatricians provide for parents. Ultimately, he is saying business and money over everything else.
January 25th, 2007 at 9:16 am
I too had a moment yesterday where I had to explain to all the office hipsters what Baby Einstein is. I personally find the whole Einstein thing vomit-inducing. The competitive over-education vibe is yucky to me; the “start training junior now or s/he’ll never get into Stanford” aspect of it. Blech.