‘Dada’ Fallon’s book has an agenda
Jimmy Fallon spends his evenings as host of NBC’s The Tonight Show, having laughing fits with Bradley Cooper, pretending to be a teenage girl whose favourite word is “Ew!” and coming up with hashtags.
But the favourite part of his day is when he’s at home, reading to his almost two-year-old daughter, Winnie Rose. (His second daughter, Frances Cole, is a baby.)
“It’s a really good bonding moment,” Fallon says.
He happily lists the titles from his inventory of children’s books like Moo, Baa, La La La! by Sandra Boynton. “Oh my gosh, it’s a great book,” he says.
Now he’s adding his own book to that inventory — Your Baby’s First Word Will Be Dada (Feiwel & Friends), available in hardcover or as a board book.
“It’s a secret mission that no one really discusses when you have a baby,” he says. “What’s baby’s first word gonna be? These days the baby’s first word is normally iPad.”
Fallon says he was blatantly obvious trying to get Winnie to say “dada.”
“I tried to trick my daughter into saying ‘dada’ because I wanted it to be her first word. I would call everything ‘dada.’ ”
His efforts didn’t work. Fallon says her first word was mama. (His wife is producer Nancy Juvonen.)
“There is no moral to this story. The only thing is the secret agenda for the baby to say ‘dada.’ It’s a little sad but it’s what dads want,” he says.
Fallon jokes that he did all the work on the 40-page book himself (except for the illustrations).
“There’s no ghost writer on this one,” he says. “It’s maybe 35 words total. I wrote the words ‘moo’ and ‘dada.’ That was all me.”