Our fifth book for children learning to read was published this past week as an app on Apple products. Not Yet, Baby is the story of a big brother and the family baby. The little one wants to do whatever the big brother does.
If big brother swims, baby wants to swim. If big brother eats a hot dog, baby wants to eat a hot dog. If big brother kick-boxes, baby wants to kick box. Often in danger, the baby is dragged away just in time by two arms.
Like our other books, Not Yet, Baby illustrates typical yet humorous situations that a four, five, or six-year old would understand. The book uses mostly one syllable, short vowel words appropriate for beginning readers. Interactive activity pages follow—word searches, matching rhyming words, filling in the correct vowel and answering yes and no questions.
The idea came to me as I was traveling through national parks in Utah and Arizona last summer. Occasionally I would get a text or a picture from my son, Tom, the dad of two little boys. The younger one was walking and following his three-year-old brother everywhere. Whatever the older boy had, the baby wanted. Whatever the older boy was doing, the baby was underfoot.
I reminded Tom that he too, had been a younger brother and had been a pain in the neck to his big brother, Lou. Lou would build elaborate corrals with wooden blocks, enclosing a dinosaur in 
each compartment. Tom would totter across the rug, destroying the entire habitat. On the tour bus in the Rockies, as I remembered spending hours restraining the rambunctious Tom, the ideas flowed, and within a few days I had a book full of sketches!
As you read Not Yet, Baby, you may remember being the older child trying to understand the limitations of a younger one.
Here’s page 13 of “Not Yet, Baby” from the sketch book idea.
Or maybe you can relate to a baby trying to keep up, or the adult who works tirelessly to keep one child safe and another one happy. Maybe the story will lead to talks with your child about your childhood or his. There’s so much to talk about in Not Yet, Baby. You can find the “Not Yet, Baby” iTunes app at http://goo.gl/CVTFZx.
Mrs. A
comicphonics for early readers 