Shakespeare for babies
Houston woman pairs the Bard with a board book
THE research is clear: Kids and babies benefit when you read to them. But there’s only so much “Hop on Pop” and “Pat the Bunny” an adult can handle. Erin Nelsen Parekh had reached her limit. She’d read so many boring board books, she could recite the simple rhymes in her sleep. So the Houston mother of two decided to replace those books with something better: Shakespeare.
“Behowl the Moon,” which Parekh funded through Kickstarter, is a 22-page board book designed for kids from birth to age 3. It features lush, detailed illustrations and some words from Puck, the mischievous sprite in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
You’ll recognize some of the lines: “If we shadows have offended, / Think but this, and all is mended, / That you have but slumbered here / While these visions did appear.”
“Behowl the Moon” doesn’t get into the play’s complicated tangle of love stories. It drops in on the play at its end, just as night falls, the lovers all go off to bed, and Puck turns to address the audience. In this context, his words read like a soothing, rhythmic assurance that it’s time for everyone to sleep.
After her first child was born two and a half years ago, Parekh decided it was a shame to read her son a boring baby book again and again.
“I thought: There’s this wealth of beautiful, gorgeous literature in our history that was never intended to be only for adults,” she said. “Shakespeare’s a beautiful example of that.”
People think of Shakespeare as inaccessible, Parekh said, but “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” may be his most approachable play.
“There’s a lot of action,” she said, “and the setting — the forest and fairies and kings — it lights up the imagination.”
Each page features just a line or two, leaving plenty of space for illustrations by Mehrdokht Amini, a London-based, award-winning illustrator. The rich, colorful images — full of fairies, animals and starlight — have plenty of detail, so readers might notice something different every time.
“I’m absolutely tickled there’s a Shakespeare book for young kids,” said Dr. David L. Hill, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Communications and Media. “Everybody loves a rhyming couplet — whether it’s Dr. Seuss or Shakespeare, it’s fun.”
It’s crucial for parents to read to kids to help them develop language, he said. But with very young children, “the process is more important than the content.”
“The most important thing is that time spent familiarizing your child with a book,” he said — the pages, the pictures, the act of reading. If the story captures an adult’s imagination, too, all the better.
Parekh decided to go the Kickstarter route after working in publishing for several years. “This market is really competitive,” she said. “Kids are the toughest audience there is.”
By proposing the project on Kickstarter and asking for funding, she was able to gauge whether there was an audience for “Behowl the Moon.” She raised nearly $18,000 for the project, which is more than she requested.
Parekh wants to do more board books featuring literature — more Shakespeare and poems by Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
“I’m so excited about having these pieces of literature that speak to me as an adult — and I know my kids would love — in a beautiful format,” she said. “It can become this object of contemplation for adults and the most beautiful possible introduction to the English language for kids.”