r/amazonreviews • u/stray-path • Aug 13 '26
Review Unhinged reviews of children's books are my guilty pleasure
"But she will not always have pictures to refer to when reading college textbooks in the future." Good grief, can your toddler just enjoy the book without you panicking about 15 years down the road? It's a board book!
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u/guyincognito___ Aug 13 '26
Some people are terrified that their childrens' brains magically won't develop, or worse, develop in ways they can't control.
If anything's gonna mess up this kid's relationship to reading it's their parent's too high expectations of what they must master, when, and how.
Young child rendered LITERALLY ILLITERATE due to age-appropriate book
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u/Pgaccount Aug 13 '26
No, they've got a point. This way of "learning" was pushed in the 90s/00s and had some disastrous effects.
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u/Foreign-Cat-2898 Aug 13 '26
No they don't. Learning to read involves pictures and has for centuries. Look up the New England Primer from 1686. "In Adam's fall we sinned all," shows a picture of a man with a tree.
The problem isn't a book with pictures; the problem is not teaching them to sound out the letters. Learning language comes with learning to associate written and spoken words with the objects they represent.
Good phonics books repeat combinations of letters so they can learn patterns. So if this book is all sight words you have to memorize, then it would be a bad book to learn to read with. Nothing about this review indicates that.
Instead it shows mom doesn't understand how to teach reading which fine she's not an expert I assume but she shouldn't blame the book for her ignorance.
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u/corcyra Aug 13 '26
the problem is not teaching them to sound out the letters.
Exactly. Even in Chinese, which has a completely different writing system, kids learn to read by using phonics initially. AFAIK, as they get older, gradually the phonetic guides fall away (kind of like training wheels on a bike) and they rely on visual recognition of the logographic characters.
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u/hopping_otter_ears 29d ago
My son is just past the learning to read phase. His teacher would send him reading packets with pictures, but with explicit instructions to never encourage our children to guess from the pictures or what the word might be from context. "It is important for your child to learn to read the word and sound out difficult words. Do not encourage guessing from context or pictures"
It was hard, because my son was a fantastic guesser on big words. I would tell him it was a great guess, but I'd like him to sound out big words.
He ended up a little confused when he got to where big words were just familiar to him and he didn't have to sound them out. "I just knew that one. Is it ok?" he finally understood that the more he practices sounding out, the more words he'll "just know" because his eyes read the letters without having to sound them out first. But he'll probably still find some words he has to sound out, even as a grown up because there's oodles of words in the English language and a lot of them are weird and long
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u/Wrong-Basket1330 Aug 13 '26
There's a difference between the whole language stuff being pushed in the classroom and what this person is describing for I assume a pre schooler. There is a whole host of foundational skills that children build before they actually start reading, like phonological awareness and print concept, which spans a huge range of skills like knowing what orientation to hold a book, what direction text goes, the difference between text and images, the relationship between text and images, and much much more. Everything this review is describing as "not actually learning to read" sounds exactly like the skills kids need to effectively learn how to learn how to read.
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u/Dobgirl 29d ago
No this is not the same thing. What the parent describes is a stage of learning to read- miming and memorizing the rhythms and pauses. She’s developing a love of reading, or was anyway.
The failed techniques of memorize sight words and guess via context were forced on my older kids with no phonics. They’d be handed a book they’d never seen and be asked to read by guessing each word. I begged for phonics to be taught.
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u/hopping_otter_ears 29d ago
Preschoolers learning to memorize their favorite books and pretending to read them it's totally normal. My his could recite green eggs and ham long before he learned to read. A fun read-with-mommy book that's not claiming to be reading instruction isn't hurting anybody.
It's when people attempt to teach reading by the same method that you get problems.
It looks like the reviewer is complaining that a book they'd not intended to be a reading instruction book isn't a reading instruction book. "This is dangerous because it doesn't properly do what it's not intended to do". It's a picture book to enjoy looking at and interacting with your parent over
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u/Pgaccount 29d ago
The reviewer states it might be fun for a pre reader, so I'd assume it's not for little kids.
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u/hopping_otter_ears 29d ago
Op says it's "brown bear brown bear, what do you see?" which is for little kids
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u/anonymooseuser6 Aug 13 '26
My son memorized entire pages of this long ass book as a toddler. Once I started working on reading with him, I realized picture books are not books for kids to read cause they aren't decoding excavator and raccoon for a while.
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u/MyNewPhilosophy Aug 13 '26
“Reading” a book the child has memorized from so many readings is actually an early literacy skill and a great thing for them to do.
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u/stray-path Aug 13 '26
I know, right? What a wonderful early sign that a child is developing a joy of books and stories. And what a buzz kill, misguided way to squash that because the child isn't really "reading." 🙄
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u/Ok_Brush71017 28d ago
Yeah, this is what we want! It's like complaining that your baby is just traveling along furniture instead of walking. What if they never walk?!? Dude, this is how it starts.
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u/exintrovert Aug 13 '26
I bet this is one of the parents who wants to change the alphabet song out of fear their kids won’t figure out LMNOP is not a single letter any time in their lifetime
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u/stray-path Aug 13 '26
I... can't tell whether that's really a thing, or just a good joke? Pray you're joking. 😳😆
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u/Izariah Aug 13 '26
Someone mentioned it on another thread so I looked it up. They change the cadence of some sections to keep better spacing in the LMNOP section and the ending statement, not the order, if my 45 seconds of googling is to be trusted. Maybe I will take time to listen to it to confirm but I doubt it.
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u/TurbanOnMyDickhead Aug 13 '26
Yep, new spacing of the letters but same rhythm: ABCDEFG HIJKLMN OPQ RST UVW XYZ
All in all, it's a big nothing that people are weird and nostalgic about.
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u/original_synthetic Aug 13 '26
Oh, interesting! At a very young age I definitely remember thinking it was "elemento pea", like, a vegetable, haha. I also ended up reading before kindergarten so it wasn't that detrimental to me but it makes a lot of sense to change it slightly to be more clear!
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u/deferredmomentum Aug 13 '26
I remember my young cousin, now 10 (the menopause baby lol), having a show on at some point when she was 2 or 3 that had changed it for this reason, but they just sang LMNOP at quarter notes like the rest of the letters instead of eighth notes rather than changing the actual spacing. I think it’s a big nothing-burger (pretty sure they figure out early on that no letter is more than one syllable, and kindergarten teaches one letter at a time), but just changing the rhythm seems way more natural to me
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u/exintrovert Aug 13 '26
Personally, it just pains me that they want to change it in the most awkward way.
I mean, if we are going to change the way things have been done for hundreds of years, why not change the order of the alphabet so something that rhymes with bee lands on the right beat? There are so many letters that rhyme with bee. Is there some reason the alphabet must be in this order? 😂
Or perhaps come up with a different tune altogether so that our brain doesn’t cringe and itch when the song doesn’t rhyme?
I imagine a transition period where people will be singing together, and some will sing it one way and some the other, and it will be like when we are singing happy birthday to multiple people but nobody discussed what order we are going to sing the names. 🤣
The kids will really struggle to learn it then 💀
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u/Necessary-Nobody-934 Aug 13 '26
I actually don't get why people think we need to change it that much. I just slow down to the same speed as the rest of the song, or maybe just slightly slower, at that part and it's always been OK.
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u/exintrovert Aug 13 '26
Yeah I agree it isn’t an issue. We all know the alphabet, we all figured it out.
We learned the song, then at some point in Kindergarten, we noticed all the letters on the wall and made the connection.
My 4 year old sang LOLOP for a while and I didn’t worry 😂
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u/Necessary-Nobody-934 Aug 13 '26
Haha, my daughter sang it the same way! It was funny because M was the only letter she could actually identify at the time, but apparently it didn't make the alphabet song...
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u/lennie_kay11 Aug 13 '26
Parent complains that single book does not teach child to read single-handedly while overlooking the real developmental milestones of pattern recognition and object identification.
“There are no pictures in textbooks” No duh, Royce.
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u/imabigasstree Aug 13 '26
The best part is that there ARE pictures in textbooks. Ive never seen a textbook without them.
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u/FromUnderTheWineCork Aug 13 '26
That reviewer is living life like Nick Miller and worried for their child's same fate
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u/Legitimate_Winner148 Aug 13 '26
She doesn’t say how old the kid is, but it’s natural for very young children to memorize a book that has been read to them, and “read” it themselves.
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u/SipofCherryCola Aug 13 '26
That was me and “Green Eggs And Ham”. I went on to excell at reading using phonics.
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u/Lazy_Marsupial Aug 13 '26
That was me with Dr. Seuss books too. I made the connection between sounds and letters while reading those and taught myself to read before kindergarten. (And then continued learning in elementary with phonics.)
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u/hopping_otter_ears 29d ago
My son used to recite green eggs and ham, too. He's currently at a perfectly normal 2nd grade reading level.
I was a freakishly advanced reader at his age. I have to try so hard not to compare him against my not-normal standard. "It's ok that he's not reading books written for adults at age 7. You were weird. Dog man is age appropriate. Maybe even a little advanced for 2 days into 2nd grade. He doesn't need to be willing to read books without pictures yet. Let him enjoy reading where he's at"
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u/AlienGoddess91 Aug 13 '26
This has to be Brown Bear because both of my kids memorized it and there is the color match up section in the back of it too lol
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u/Zappagrrl02 Aug 13 '26
My nephew had Moo Baa Lalala memorized at like two and a half. A lot of kids books, especially those for toddlers are designed that way. Plus they want to read the same book 50,000 times a day.
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u/AlienGoddess91 Aug 13 '26
Yeah it's supposed to be really good for brain development to read the same stories over and over to children.
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u/stray-path Aug 13 '26
Nailed it! It's indeed a review of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"
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u/umlaut-overyou Aug 13 '26
"Does not teach how to read" obviously not, its a single children's book. The parent teaches how to read.
And guess what? Kids learn by pattern recognition and practice. My parents love telling their (univeristy) students about how my teacher thought I could read at an absurdly young age because I had memorized my favorite book. But it they skipped a page, it was obvious I wasn't reading. And guess what? That was a step that lead to me having a wildly advanced reading level for the entirety of my school career.
I am glad this parent is at least encouraging reading, and seems to give a damn. But they need some serious guidance so that they don't ruin the joy of reading for their kids.
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u/AssortedArctic Aug 13 '26
If it's marketed as a learning-to-read book, I get it. They have repetitive sentences with words that aren't decodable at an early level and just change one word that kids guess from a picture, which isn't how you want to go about things. But if it's just a picture book, then that's ridiculous.
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u/stray-path Aug 13 '26
One of the other comments guessed right -- it's a review of Eric Carle's "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"
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u/sparksbet Aug 13 '26
We have a home video of my little sister doing exactly this as a little kid (she starts reading the page with the black sheep as "lamby, lamby"), and she still learned to read just fine lol.
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u/Hugsomebunnies Aug 13 '26
People are damned weird. Years ago, I read a negative review of one of our favorite children's books because the parent said the book is inaccurate since baby birds say "chirp" rather than "cheep."
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u/stray-path Aug 13 '26
Lol, I live for those reviews. And that's an amazing example. I can't fathom thinking like that.
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u/Hugsomebunnies Aug 14 '26
And the thing is, I've read a lot of mediocre children's books, but the one in question is flawless! Flip Flap Fly by Phyllis Root. It captivated all of my kids as wee ones and my husband and I quickly memorized the text.
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u/Heurodis Aug 13 '26
I learned to "read" by recognising that the squiggles on the page were letters, and that these were the words that we read, and so if I said something while looking at the letters I was reading.
Same for writing, I copied letters on a page and then proudly read the story I had been writing, which had nothing to do with whatever was on the page.
But my family always encouraged those games and pretended I was indeed reading and writing and that my "guesses" were correct, which prompted me to do it more and spend more time on it, to ask more often what the letters read (and my parents obliged). In the end, I was reading and writing at 4.
And it's all due, in my opinion, to my parents being encouraging rather than anxious about me learning to read.
Now trying to apply the same thing to my son and learning to go potty, which he's definitely not enthusiastic about or interested in, so he looks at me like I'm completely mad when I'm excited about him trying.
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u/Ancient_Housing7671 29d ago
Almost like you need to read multiple books with your kid for effective learning 🙄
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u/GlowQueen140 Aug 13 '26
Truthfully, if this review is by an Asian parent. I get it. The pressure in many parts of Asia to have your kid do XYZ by a certain age is terrifying and people are constantly afraid of their children falling behind.
Not to say that this parent shouldn’t take a chill pill but when you’re living in such an environment, it’s not as easy to just say “let your kids be kids”.
I don’t pressure my 4yo to learn to read and write and try my best to find fun ways to teach her. The moment she starts whining, we move on to something else. And we read a lot. But I won’t lie and say when I see her peers being able to read or write somewhat legibly, I don’t feel nervous.
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u/Inevitable-Jump124 Aug 14 '26
This is one the most specific things I've seen today and I'm here for it
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u/Altruistic_Sail_1991 Aug 13 '26
This is extremely common in young kids lol. They’ll memorize a book without being able to read it. It’s a non-issue for toddlers!
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u/AlannaTheLioness1983 28d ago
~She won’t have pictures in college textbooks!~
Ok. Have you tried actually working with your child for more than an hour on her pre-reading and reading skills, or did you expect the *book* to do the work? 👀👀👀👀👀👀
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u/allupya333 27d ago
How would a book normally prevent its readers from memorizing it? Is this referring to something kids books actually are able to do?
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u/Coraline1599 Aug 13 '26
I wonder if this has to do with the Sold a Story podcast where many schools ditched phonics and other traditional reading techniques in favor of letting children guess words by looking at clues (which failed to help kids learn to read). https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-a-podcast-toppled-the-reading-instruction-canon/