Father Knows Best? Your Baby's First Word Will Be Dada! by Jimmy Fallon

COMPETITIVE PARENTING: ROUND 1!

Why NOT? Why CAN'T a baby's first word be DADA instead of MAMA?

A belligerent-looking bull demands a DADA out of his little calf.

MOO

A righteous ram offers DADA.

The little lamb listens.

BAA

A dog demands a dada from his offspring.

The pup woofs back. A persistent rabbit and tomcat try their luck. A rooster crows out his da-da-doodle-do! A daddy pig grunts out his preferred alternative title.

But nature has the last word, and none of the newbies come up with the magic word.

Well, logically, human history and speech development experts agree that MMMM! is easier to say that DDDD!

But expecting his first baby, Jimmy Fallon refused to accept the popular wisdom. To overcome the mommy milk advantage, he offered his new baby a bottle and called it a dada. "Want your dada?" he cooed.

Did it work? Well, no.

But you can't blame a dad for trying, in Fallon's best-selling new salute to fathers, Your Baby's First Word Will Be DADA (Feiwel and Friends, 2015). Miguel Ordonez's deadpan animal babies, done up in simple Playskool-shapes deadpan their usual "ribbets, peeps, oinks," and "meows." But if it's any consolation to loving dads like Jimmy Fallon, his baby animals don't exactly say "Mama," either! And artist Ordonez offers a triumph to doting daddies in his comic closing endpapers, where all the little ones do manage to yell out DADA, all except a determined little duckling, that is! There's always one in every crowd!

This is a wonderful Fathers Day book for expectant daddies, and a natural for babies, toddlers and even almost-emergent readers who learn to decipher a few animals sounds along the way.

I Did It My Way! Sam's First Wordby Bea Birdsong

 

THERE ONCE WAS A NEWISH BABY. HER NAME WAS SAM.

Sam is already quite accomplished. She can wave her arms when her dog Farnsworth tries to get her food. She can clap her hands when Farnsworth does tricks. And she can remove her diaper and make a giggling getaway in the "altogether." Her whole family smiles every time she shows off her new skills. But there is one thing they just can't wait for her to perform. . . .

HER FIRST WORD!

Mama wants it to be MAMA! Papa wants it to be PAPA. Nana wanted it to be NANA! Even the next-door neighbor, Mr. Theotopholous, wants it to be his name! They all make up songs with one-word lyrics--their names.

But Sam has other concerns! She says. . .

"POOP!"

Nobody pays any attention to Sam, as they set out to push their own names. Mama sings a song with "Mama" as the only lyric; Papa reads a story in which the only words are his name. Nana does her own show-and-tell, even painting NANA on the wall. Sam waves her arms, claps her hands, and points at her diapered bottom!

"POOP!"

While everyone continues pressing the case for their own names, Sam decides it's time to up the ante on this presentation. She takes off her smelly diaper, and while Farnsworth covers his nose, waves the offending garment in front of them, and makes an announcement!

POOP!

Everyone smiles when they realize they've just heard Sam's first word, in Bea Birdsong's jolly new story, Sam's First Word (Little, Brown and Company, 2021). Any picture book in which the punch line is POOP will have primary kids rolling on the rug in giggles and repeating that popular word themselves. Hollie Hatam's charming pictures of this piquant toddler's first venture into speech makes for a good read-aloud, although it is recommended that this one be the final book of the session!

Quips Kirkus Reviews, "Cheeky... fresh, fun, and funny."

Pair this one with Jimmy Fallon's Your Baby's First Word Will Be DADA (see review here).

Mamacentric Universe? Everything Is MAMA! by Jimmy Fallon

EVERYTHING IS MAMA, ACCORDING TO YOU.

BUT THERE ARE OTHER FUN WORDS YOU'LL WANT TO KNOW, TOO!

Which comes first? DA-DA? Or MA-MA?

Whichever is the first word, the Big Two stand alone as the initial achievement for Baby.

Still, there's a big wide, wonderful world of words out there just waiting to be voiced, and most word-loving moms can't wait to hear them from Baby's lips.

But some kids get stuck in a rut!

SUN! (says Mom Turtle).

MAMA! (says her son, dutifully wearing his sunglasses.)

But logophile mothers keep trying with a bunch of child-pleasing nouns. Come on, Kid! Read my lips! Say--Waffle? Hat? Boat? Ball? Balloon?

But little monkeys, ostriches, tigers, and penguins don't follow their leader. They all fall back on their favorite word! And we all know what that is, don't we? Well, one doesn't. Given the word, Boat, he comes back with Quack!

There's one in every crowd.

A mama giraffe with a very nice neck slurps a very long Noodle! Who could resist trying that nice oodly oodle word? Her baby, that's who. A mama zebra tries another juicy word--one with a plosive initial consonant and rhyming syllables--Pajamas! Back comes that favorite word.

Mother 'Gator blows Bubbles, Mother Owl hoots Moon, and Mother Sloth bestirs herself to juggle Apples, all to no avail. At least all the critter tots are consistent. (Well, not that duckling. He's gotta be the exception that proves the rule.)

Can't anybody say anything but Mama?

A companion book to late-night star Jimmy Fallon's best-selling, Your Baby's First Word Will Be DADA (see 2015 review here), his just-published Everything Is MAMA (Feiwel and Friends, 2017) gives mothers their due. It's probably true that the local version of "mama" is the most spoken word world wide, and Fallon's new picture book will have youngsters gleefully chiming in on that oft-repeated word on every double-page spread. Artist Miguel Ordonez takes up right where he left off in the first book with his soft, simple, and stylized animals in sight gags that even the littlest will find funny: a little turtle refuses to say "sun" but shows that he knows to don his sunglasses when he sees it, and a stubborn little duckling deadpans a quack right back in a species-specific response. It's all in good fun, because as all little ones know, for Mama. . .

EVERYTHING IS YOU!

So... This Is Baby by Jimmy Fallon

Babies come with all kinds of parts.

But they all come ready for love in their hearts.

They have darling parts in all sorts of shapes.

Knees with sweet dimples and necks with cute napes.

And late-night comedian Jimmy Fallon has his third hit baby book to join his long-time best-selling Your Baby's First Word Will Be DADA and Everything Is Mama, (see reviews here) in his latest celebration of infant and the parents of same, This Is Baby (Feiwel and Friends, 2019) in which Fallon provides a rhyming catalog of each delightful little part:

THIS IS BABY'S TUMMY,
AND EACH TICKLE IS A PROBLEM.
JUST TURN BABY OVER,
AND THIS IS BABY'S BOTTOM.

From nose to toes, from top to bottom, this is another charming board book for new parents and new babies, in a series that is too much fun to miss.