As someone who *also* has this book memorized, and is now working on AI Policy in the hopes that my child can read aloud to his children someday, the last paragraph was disturbing. Uh, well done, I guess?
As long as Mom doesn’t get replaced. There will (should) still be the job of reading books to pajama clad toddlers and forming souls 🥰 while the Optimus does the ironing!
My preschooler's current favorite is the Little Snowplow, and there the trucks seem both autonomous AND driven by people. It confuses me. But maybe there's something to that -- the autonomous world that occasionally needs human input to keep it going straight.
I will say, the one thing I dislike about GGCS is that the anthropomorphized accessories the trucks get diminish with each truck. The first gets a teddy and a nightlight. The last gets... not even a dirt pillow. I feel like there must be something deeper going on here but I don't know what.
This is the most amazing post I have ever read on substack. I just read parts of it aloud to my 11 year old, who is laughing hysterically. I will never see GGCS the same way again.
The Spanish version is a remarkably good and faithful translation.
Not only does it scan--it conveys generally accurate information about construction vehicles! One of the best of the genre, even if it always gave me a Soviet Realism vibe.
The sequel does not reliably scan and may be ignored.
How did I miss this book? The twins were born just a few years after it was first published. Perhaps it's that we already knew the books we wanted to read to them and didn't look enough at new ones. (Or maybe it was just the girls never got into construction equipment.)
I highly recommend Sally Sutton & Brian Lovelock's books, which have beautiful and precise pictures, top-notch rhythm, and plenty of humans:
Dig, Dump, Roll (ages 1-2)
https://a.co/d/09aNobUx
Construction (ages 1-3)
https://a.co/d/03qUPfvy
Tractor (ages 2-5)
https://a.co/d/0gsu2HlD
As someone who *also* has this book memorized, and is now working on AI Policy in the hopes that my child can read aloud to his children someday, the last paragraph was disturbing. Uh, well done, I guess?
Re: footnote 4, recommending Lucy Ives on My Little Pony https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2024/09/09/of-unicorns-on-my-little-pony/
As long as Mom doesn’t get replaced. There will (should) still be the job of reading books to pajama clad toddlers and forming souls 🥰 while the Optimus does the ironing!
So, the book in question is fifteen years old. Welp, off to bed I go, for I am old.
My preschooler's current favorite is the Little Snowplow, and there the trucks seem both autonomous AND driven by people. It confuses me. But maybe there's something to that -- the autonomous world that occasionally needs human input to keep it going straight.
I will say, the one thing I dislike about GGCS is that the anthropomorphized accessories the trucks get diminish with each truck. The first gets a teddy and a nightlight. The last gets... not even a dirt pillow. I feel like there must be something deeper going on here but I don't know what.
Goodnight Moon tells of the fading history, too.
This is the most amazing post I have ever read on substack. I just read parts of it aloud to my 11 year old, who is laughing hysterically. I will never see GGCS the same way again.
The Spanish version is a remarkably good and faithful translation.
From “A” Apple to “Z” Zebra, Baby's First Pop-up Book is 26 pages of alphabetic adventure
Not only does it scan--it conveys generally accurate information about construction vehicles! One of the best of the genre, even if it always gave me a Soviet Realism vibe.
The sequel does not reliably scan and may be ignored.
How did I miss this book? The twins were born just a few years after it was first published. Perhaps it's that we already knew the books we wanted to read to them and didn't look enough at new ones. (Or maybe it was just the girls never got into construction equipment.)