She enjoyed the reading quite a bit. It turns out she’s a more participatory reader than Siena was at this age. Which is to say, the reading of each page progressed as follows. I’d turn the page, get it set in front of her, and as I’m reading the page, her little hands reach out and grab the book on each edge, just like I’m holding it. Then those little arms start folding towards her with hydraulic strength (she’s strong!) like a back-hoe moving a boulder. As the book hears her face, she tilts it down and just manages to get the corner of the book into her mouth, at which point I pull it out and move on to the next page.

I read The Going to Bed Book after that, and held it out of her short but stout reach, and she got sufficiently upset about that that we couldn’t even finish the book.

Siena’s activity now is to point to the mouse on every full-color page. The mouse is, in some ways, an easter egg, in that it appears in a different place on each of those pages, doing (or at least implying) some different little activity. As Siena drifts closer and closer to sleep, she more and more gingerly points to the mouse each time and whispers “mouse.”

To my mind’s eye, I see three bears hanging out in the green room with baby bunny. Awkward? Sure. Unclear what the bears do when the lights go off, the cats curl up, and bunny goes to sleep? Definitely. But nonetheless, a literal image of the text.

Which raises several questions, including did some text need to be cut to improve the pacing? Did Mr. Hurd put the bears into a picture in order to obviate the need for lengthy plot expositions to deal with three (possibly hungry) bears in a room with cats and rabbits? Was there an author/illustrator spat, of which this is the surviving manifestation?

The world may never know. (Actually, if I did some research perhaps the world would know, but I can’t be bothered right now.)

In the book Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw and Margot Apple, every time I read the line “Uh-oh, jeep won’t go,” Siena giggles. Maybe it’s how I say it, maybe it’s the artwork, maybe it’s the fact that therein lies the central, ironic flaw of the woolly travelers, revealed on page 2 and causing all of their turmoil for the remainder of the book. On second thought, it’s probably how I say it.

In the going-to-bed classic Goodnight Moon, there’s a much more tender moment when we get to the page that has the toy house only and says, “Goodnight little house.” Every time, without fail, Siena reaches out and touches that page. She doesn’t touch any of the pages leading up to that one, although she has started touching some of the later pages. But this one has, for the past few weeks, always compelled her to touch it. It’s very sweet, and definitely a hilight of the reading session.

Also, she really helps with turning pages, and she clearly understands when she has failed to turn to a new page, because she will keep trying to turn the page until she succeeds. Sometimes I won’t continue reading until she turns the page, so book time can take a while, but usually she really has the hang of it, and knows when to reach out to turn the page and keep the story moving.

I have no idea what kind of cognitive development is underway, but it seems somewhat promising, at least.