My son had settled on the page that teaches him about his ABCs: a two-page spread of an open refrigerator that contains 26 items, each one starting with a letter of the alphabet. Here is a snapshot of the page:
After goofing around for a minute or so, my "skepti-sense" started tingling. Something wasn't right here. If you start from A, everything looks pretty normal at first. When I got to F, I thought it was a little interesting to put french fries in the fridge, but it is food, so I let it go. If you keep going on to I and it gets a little weird. When I "tagged" the ice cream, he very nervously declared that his name ass Izzy and he was melting. Okay, good. At least it was consistent with the environment. So, the left side of the fridge passed the test of my healthy skepticism.
The right side of the page descended into absurdity, and fast. Nuts in the fridge was passable, but what the heck was a live quail doing at the end of the row? I don't even think that's legal in California because you and I know what will happen to that bird when the refrigerator door is closed. Then there was an umbrella? I suppose if it were garnish for a drink it could go in the fridge, but this is a children's book! A violin? Next! Yes, I tend to keep the X-rays of the chicken on the bottom-right shelf, next to the live miniature zebra.
The absurdity of this refrigerator doesn't stop there. One of the tasks you are called upon to complete is to make Melinda (the girl on the left) a sandwich consisting of three items. Clues are given (the initial sound of the letter or the actual number itself) and your child has to find the corresponding item. Thankfully, Tag doesn't have the reader select any living or musical items for a sandwich--Whew! That could have been an awkward conversation with my pre-schooler.
Here are some of the sandwiches my son and I built:
- Jelly, nuts, & ketchup
- Pizza, jelly, & french fries
- Milk, hot dogs, & broccoli
- Eggs, grape, & watermelon
When I run across stuff like this, I try to imagine the meeting that started it all--a small team gathered around a mahogany table starting sentences with "picture this!" They probably got really excited about the refrigerator idea pretty quickly. I could imagine that enthusiasm carrying them through the letter I. Then they hit their first road block. The group is discouraged. Someone suggests a melting cone of ice cream, which works with the environment, and excitement returns. And then there was Q. "Uhh, we'll come back to it. Oh no, V! What are we going to do about X and Z? And we're going to have them make a sandwich?"
This is probably when the boss sticks his head in and says that the art department needs the full scope of the spread by tomorrow, so they have a 5 pm deadline and no access to Google. That must be how they ended up with a quail, X-ray of a chicken (why not a drumstick?), a violin, and a zebra you can put in your pocket.
I'm not disparaging the book. My son and I rather enjoyed it. I would say, "A milk, hot dog, and broccoli sandwich?!" Then we would both exclaim, "Eeeeewwwwww!" The crazy sandwiches were part of the fun. And he was learning his letter sounds (though not all of them). Also, the Tag Reader System really helped this busy dad.
Eventually, my fatigue from the week settled in and I dozed off. My son kept playing though. And he learned more about word sounds while I took a brief nap. Not too bad if you ask me.
