Pseudotacitus

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

1/12
Can a one-year-old follow a Caldecott book?

I promise to address the objections

But first—
Why Caldecott is worth getting to know
And why I believe in the effort 🧵

#FromZeroToTwelve • #ReadingRestored • #MemoryRestored

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

@IAPolls2022 Prayers answered

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

16/16
In the 0-to-12 reading program
I’m not posting year-by-year lists in order

This is age 0
Singing rather than reading aloud

because infants can build
- attention
- interest
- the expectation of shared reading time

What’s not included:
Story books
They're combined with the age 1 book list

1. Age 0 Pre-Reading List https://t.co/mulqWqVk0G ← This post
2. Ages 0 & 1 Read-Aloud List https://t.co/gTDwVYiueJ
3. The Caldecott Books: Excellence Suited to the Earliest Years https://t.co/5WUoawotZC

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

12/16
Where to find them:

• Youtube playlist by D’Oyly Carte
https://t.co/fMKLT3Qpoe

52 songs, and yet it’s missing two that were popular in our house:
“A More Humane Mikado”
“We are gentlemen of Japan”

• It's Easy to Play Gilbert and Sullivan — Watters

• The Authentic Gilbert & Sullivan Songbook
92 songs and the the most comprehensive collections. But the music is dense and can be challenging

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

#FromZeroToTwelve on #MemoryRestored
(a year-by-year reading program)

The series will be on hiatus till Monday, 8/17/26, while I’m on vacation

My thanks to everyone who has been following. I look forward to returning.

Three posts dedicated to ages 0 and 1 are now complete
1. Age 0 Pre-Reading List https://t.co/mulqWqVk0G
2. Ages 0 and 1 Read-Aloud List https://t.co/gTDwVYiueJ
3. The Caldecott Books: Excellence Suited to the Earliest Years https://t.co/5WUoawotZC ← Most recent post

· · ·

Previously:
• Age 2
https://t.co/2UsR5zo3un
+ Age 2: Rhymes and Poems
+ One companion post

The age 2 table of contents got separated from its post:
https://t.co/K4gL2P0niW

• Age 3
https://t.co/BpYDMhBMvE
+ Two companion posts

• Age 4
First half-year list
https://t.co/X4gDf77lLI
Second half-year list
+ Four companion posts

• Age 5
https://t.co/VDGL39532r
+ Five companion posts

• Age 6
Read-Aloud List
https://t.co/5NqvJMgcyM
+ Age 6 Solo List
+ Five companion posts

• Age 8
Read-Aloud List
https://t.co/AUw2BGWuYB
+ Age 8 Solo List
+ Age 8 Solo List for History
+ Nine companion posts

• Age 9
Read-Aloud List
https://t.co/a9tBU6zWi3
+ Age 9 Solo List
+ Three companion posts

• Age 10 Read-Aloud List
https://t.co/0T6jtnJauY
+ Age 10 Solo List
+ Reading Rome (Ages 3 – Teen): a List
+ Seven companion posts

• Age 11 Read-Aloud List
https://t.co/haSLFyb4of
+ Age 11 Solo List
+ Reading Rome (Ages 3 – Teen): a List
+ Four companion posts

· · ·

Also — there will be three interruptions — 
Two have been posted

1. “Ridiculous Humor — Why It Matters” https://t.co/Eaice8BAso
+ Ridiculous Books — a List

2. Science Fiction That Boldly Goes https://t.co/jYDNxJnqa4
+ Three posts on the problem of young adult dystopias
+ Turning on the Sun and the Stars — a List

Still to come:
- Boys’ Books for Girls

These categories need separate posts to explain
what I’m recommending —
and what I’m not

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

1/12
Can a one-year-old follow a Caldecott book?

I promise to address the objections

But first—
Why Caldecott is worth getting to know
And why I believe in the effort 🧵

#FromZeroToTwelve • #ReadingRestored • #MemoryRestored

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

@Luna_Jones79 We actually thought Reagan was going to do it

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

12/12
With Randolph Caldecott’s books of Mother Goose, you're connecting children to centuries of English language and to the birth of the modern picture book

And you’re teaching them to respond to striding verse and lively drawings — and to value uncompromised standards

· · ·

Ages 0 and 1 now have 3 posts

1. Age 0 Pre-Reading List
2. Ages 0 and 1 Reading List
3. The Caldecott Books: Excellence Suited to the Earliest Years ← you are here

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

10/12
Objection 4: A point we have not addressed!
Babies will not like these subtle illustrations

Answer:
The thing about babies is: they want your attention. If that's what you're doing together, they're happy to have you train their vision

- Point to every little thing. Circle your finger over the page
- Narrate the wordless pages
- Be astonished: “oak-a-lee, oak-a-lee” (the official blackbird song)

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

11/12
And you can prepare: over the early months of reading nursery rhymes, try the Golden Age illustrations

Because ours is an age of affordable reprints

• The Volland Mother Goose — famous in its day (1915) for lush color and cozy details

• The Little Mother Goose illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. Mostly black and white. Some color plates
(Smith’s un-little Mother Goose is wonderful but unmanageable — 750 rhymes, 11” wide, and weighs as much as half a bag of flour)

If you’re singing,
• Walter Crane’s Baby’s Opera has been reprinted

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

9/12
Objection 2: The language is too archaic

Answer: Not for a baby who has heard these same nursery rhymes from birth

Objection 3: The stories run through too many pages

Answer: That's why we've been building toward them—from Pat the Bunny to Mister Magnolia

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

5/12
(2) The Caldecott books train the eye

Below are the cat and the fiddle and the jumping cow.

- Cleanly composed — with a hint of perspective


- Worth lingering over. The more you look, the more you find:
The cat’s masterful effort, the winking pig, the astonished dairymaid


- Agreeable, restrained color
Perhaps Caldecott liked the old brick wall as much as I do — he put his initials on it

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

8/12
Now for the objections:

Objection 1: The books are hard to find.

Answer: They were. But not any more. New West Press issued reprints in 2022.

Two books will do. These are the six I'd choose from:
• Sing a Song for Sixpence
• The Queen of Hearts
• Hey Diddle Diddle
• Ride a-Cock Horse to Banbury
• The Milkmaid
• The House that Jack Built

- Ask your library to borrow them
- Or, if possible, own a pair and make them part of family life: Search “
Randolph Caldecott Picture Book Series” on Amazon (https://t.co/ubN0XW7aSc). They’re ~$10 each. (Try to ignore the cluttered book covers!)
- Preview them here: https://t.co/tH31LahHww

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

7/12
(3) Caldecott trains the imagination — With pictures that carry stories within the story

Below, the Queen of Hearts
- How was the thief identified? The cat told!
- The knave was nearly late — for target practice! Ouch!

Your baby has been forming the habit of attention — to sounds, patterns, gestures, small invention. These pages are the payoff

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

6/12
You’re establishing expectations
For line that’s beautiful or deliberately playful — 
Rackham or Quentin Blake. Then Botticelli’s Commedia

For color that’s subordinate or breathtaking — but never clashing:
Beatrix Potter or Maxfield Parrish. Later Gauguin or Kurosawa

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

4/12
Why train a love of language?

Later (not so much later) children can hear —
“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold…”
“Our revels now are ended.”
“Growltiger was a Bravo Cat, who travelled on a barge…”

And they’ll appreciate the mix of lyrical beauty and slapstick that is the Wind in the Willows

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

1/12
Can a one-year-old follow a Caldecott book?

I promise to address the objections

But first—
Why Caldecott is worth getting to know
And why I believe in the effort 🧵

#FromZeroToTwelve • #ReadingRestored • #MemoryRestored

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

3/12
It takes an extra commitment to read Caldecott’s nursery rhyme books to babies. So here are 3 reasons I hope you’ll try —

(1) Nursery rhymes — not just those illustrated by Caldecott — train the ear —

Three of the most beautiful are outside the Caldecott collection:
“Little Boy Blue”
“The North Wind doth blow”
“I saw a fishpond all on fire”

- strong beats
- flexible lighter syllables
- shifts in pace
- and vivid imagery

For a child, the lilting vowels and rough consonants — the variety of English verse — become familiar and pleasurable — not strange

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

2/12
Randolph Caldecott transformed children’s illustration in just nine years before his sudden death in 1886

He invented the picture book — where pictures become equal partners with words. That partnership was not seen again until Peter Rabbit in 1902

He went farther —

He extended the rhymes. He invented scenes, comic business, and explanations — none of them even mentioned in the text. Half the pages have no words at all

Caldecott was "like a ray of sunshine into our life, and brightened the drudgery of our toil with his cheerful humour” — said an early co-worker. That immense good will is evident in his children’s books
· · ·
Below — speaking of the co-worker, Caldecott immortalized their employer as the “man all tattered and torn” in The House That Jack Built

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

@VigilantFox Another brave person: Stephen A - willing to say he was wrong.

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

@its_The_Dr Dramatizes the disservice McConnell does by refusing to resign

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

10/10
Reading Mr. Magnolia is an accomplishment. It has
- many pages and a long stretch of rhyme
- narrative sequence
- slightly richer vocabulary

The next step is Caldecott’s books of single nursery rhymes —
And you may be secretly ready

For ages 0 and 1, I’m now planning 3 posts:
1. “Age 0 Pre-Reading List”
2. “Ages 0 and 1 Reading List” ← you are here
3. Caldecott’s picture books and how to get there

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

1/10
For babies ages zero and one, I’m running the book lists together

From touch-and-feel and lift-the-flap
through rhythm and humor
to simple stories

I started with rhymes and songs
I’ll round out the series with Caldecott’s legendary picture books

⭐ marks 4 benchmark books (shown below) 🧵

#FromZeroToTwelve • #ReadingRestored • #MemoryRestored

[Pseudotacitus @MemoryRestored]

9/10
The mix:
- Actual short stories
- Cumulative text and dialogue

(31) Little Blue Truck — Schertle
(32) There Is a Bear on My Chair — Collins
(33) The Poky Little Puppy — Lowrey
(34) There Is a Bird on Your Head — Willems
(35) When Grandad Was a Penguin — Hood
(36) How to Hide a Lion — Stephens

(37) Mouse on the River — Melvin
(Below ↓)
Elaborate lift-the-flap. The best flap is a canal lock where the water level changes

(38) ⭐ Mr. Magnolia — Blake