This Is My Daddy!

This Is My Daddy! (see original review here www.cmreviews.ca/node/1661), first published in 2020 as a 32 page hardcover picture book with a padded cover, rounded corners, card stock paper and reinforced trade binding, has been reissued in a smaller board book format. Not only have the book’s physical dimensions been reduced in size, but the contents have been shortened as well.

The hardcover version offered young readers eight facing-page scenarios in which one page had an animal or insect youngster asking, “Who is my Daddy?”, while the opposite page offered four of Miles van Hout’s visual possibilities. Once readers had made a decision as to which visual represented what they believed to be the correct response, they could turn the page to find a spread in which the “correct” father was seen interacting with its young, along with text reading, “This is My Daddy!”.

In the board book, the contents no longer have a baby snail or a hippopotamus calf seeking their fathers, but the parent-questing young of frogs, butterflies, beavers, tigers, hedgehogs and humans remain. In my review of the hardcover book, I made the following point which I believe to be even more valid as it relates to a format aimed at the younger end of the board book’s intended audience:

The book’s contents, involving eight [now six] matches in total, are challenging, perhaps unnecessarily so in terms of how its contents have been sequenced. Instead of beginning with more simple matches, such as the aforementioned tigers, beavers or hippopotami, the first “child” readers encounter is a tadpole. Unless these young readers have been previously exposed to the life cycle of a frog, the chances of their coming up with the correct father is, of course, one in four. Later in the book, youngsters experience a similar circumstance where a worm-like butterfly larva has to be matched with its adult butterfly father.

In the board book, the tadpole continues to be first to search for its father while the butterfly larva is the second. This double challenging beginning to the book may be discouragingly off-putting to toddlers.

While This Is My Daddy! is an acceptable board book, parents and gift-buying friends and relatives might want to wait until the child is beyond the one to two-year-old toddler stage and purchase the hardcover version.