Welcome to another baby book club! Today, baby librarians Tilly and Marian discuss the lift-the-flap board book Baby Feminists by Libby Babbott-Klein, illustrated by Jessica Walker.
Marian:Â This book reminds me of our last baby book club book, Dream Big, Little One. Like Dream Big, it has a different grownup girl on each page, except these pictures all look really different, and it’s not just grownups. Under flaps there are babies. I really like to say the word “baby,” so every time Mommy said it, I said it back. Do you have a favorite word?
Tilly: I don’t say very many words yet. I say ‘da’ a lot. It sometimes means ‘daddy’ but not always. It depends on my mood a lot. Sometimes everything is ‘da’. I make good animal noises though! I like animals. I’m not sure about this book. There aren’t any animals in it.
Marian: Did you notice that on each flap there are cutouts, so that the grownup girl picture and the baby girl picture beneath share something? My favorite is the very first one, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, because both the grownup version and the baby version wear glasses. I love glasses! I love stealing Mommy and Daddy’s glasses. It’s a fun game. Grownup and baby Yoko Ono also wear glasses, but she wears strange, dark glasses. I’m not so sure of those. Do your Mummy and Daddy wear glasses? Do you play the same game? What’s your favorite page?
Tilly: My mummy wears glasses all the time and my daddy wears glasses at night when he takes his eyes out. I like trying to grab my mummy’s glasses but she always says no and I’ll get my own glasses sooner or later. I like Ruth too! Baby Ruth has a thing that looks like a hammer that my mummy says is a gavel. It looks like a good banging stick. I like hitting things so I think that one is my favourite baby. The astronaut lady is cool too though. She was in our last book club book! And the picture of Malala has a bookshelf and books in it! So I like that.
Marian: These must be really important people, because I have several books where they appear. I have a bunch with Malala Yousafzai, Dream Big also has Mae Jemison in it, and Mae Jemison and Billie Jean King are in the Little Feminist Board Book Set. I also have a board book about Michelle Obama. But everyone else must not be that important: Barack Obama, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Frida Kahlo, Gloria Steinem, and Dorothy Pitman Hughes. I don’t know who these people are. Have you read other books with any of these people in them?
Tilly: Mummy read me a book called Of Thee I Sing which she says was written by Barack Obama. So I guess he’s important too? Maybe he’s a writer. I don’t have any of the other books you talked about though.
Marian: I like that there’s one boy in here, because otherwise, I would think only girls can be feminists. Though Daddy says he’s a feminist. Do you know who Barack Obama is? Mommy said he was president, but I don’t know what that means. Is it like being a feminist, I wonder?
Tilly: He’s the one who wrote that book I just mentioned! I don’t know much about him though. My mummy and daddy mention the president sometimes when I overhear them talking in the car but I don’t think it’s the same one. Mummy and Daddy don’t say very good things about the president and Barack Obama is good enough to be in a book so he must be good. Grown-up things are confusing.
Marian: I thought that was a good book! I liked lifting the flaps and I really enjoyed saying “baby” over and over. It was fun talking to you, Tilly. I’m looking forward to the next book club!