#BabyLove: My Toddler Life by Corine Dehghanpisheh

Mums will be familiar with the ability of babies to hone in on their mobile phones, utterly fascinated, or sometimes just using it as a teether.  My Toddler Life incorporates this fascination by babies into its narrative.  The book follows a small child through the eyes of his mother, or more accurately the frame of her phone as they play and makes memories.

 The little one is shown counting, colouring and making music with mum recording the fun and sharing.  This is until he is tempted by him mum’s phone.  Knowing he mustn’t touch but unable to resist, he takes the phone and tries taking selfies and pictures of the dog before dropping the phone and getting scared.  Mum handles he situation with love and utmost gentleness, encouraging him to apologise.

This is a good sized, glossy soft book, more suited to reading to a child than letting them handle it.  Slightly older children who understand how to take care of a book might also enjoy it.  The pictures are bold and colourful and easy on the eye for a little one, I really liked the expressions and actions of the dog throughout the book.  I liked that the prose is written in rhyme, making it more pleasurable to read.  The book does have a lot of pages, so takes a bit of time to get through when reading out loud.

I wondered if the book would be judgemental, as people so often are when parents use their smart phones, but there was no preachy message about putting your phone down, instead the book ends with the mum sharing her special moments on the phone, hugging her little one, then outing her phone down to play with her child.