Explorando la Literatura

Tanto por Aprender

Think about all that children have to learn. The world begins with just a few categories, such as: things I can touch, smell, see or feel; hard and soft; sweet and sour; light and dark; people who care for me. Driven to learn, children's ideas and the world around them soon begin to take shape. Knowledge accumulates, language expands, and every day the child explores new horizons.

Infants recognize familiar images from their growing world — a world that is becoming differentiated into size, shape, color, quantity, and species. Board books like Big and Little offer babies pictures with sharp contrast and much to talk about. A good board book library will have photos and drawings, simple shapes and colors, lots of faces, familiar objects, simple stories or rhymes, or no words at all.

A child's imagination is one of the few places where anything can happen. Peter Pan, Dorothy from Kansas, Max with his wild things, mighty little animals, and all the fictional children who escape witches and giants — all these characters and books like The Day the Babies Crawled Away engage the hearts and fill the minds inspiring children to act and dream.

Books help bring the world in all its splendid complexity to children and also help them understand their feelings as they venture into the world, imagining all that can happen, all they might do, and who they might someday become.

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