Baby Danced the Polka by Karen Beaumont

Baby Danced the Polka by Karen Beaumont, illustrated by Jennifer Plecas

Rating: 5 polka-dancing stars!

This is an old favorite of ours, one that beloved Grammy found some years ago.  It's the only book that we have that gives a nod to our Polish ancestry, something that lingers in my sister and I though our last names no longer have a confusing jumble of consonants that somehow sound like "check" or end in "ski."  But, to be honest, it's only a tiny nod, just a good excuse to get this book for anyone and everyone who has a little bit of polka-dancing in their past.

Karen Beaumont is at her best with this swinging poem about a baby who just won't go to bed.  His Ma and Pa keep on putting him to bed and get right to work on some chores around the house like fixing the chow, washing wigs (?!  hey, it rhymes with pig), starching long johns, hauling water and other stuff we don't do anymore but is fun to think about doing.  Except the wig thing.  Ok, and maybe the long johns, too.  But then the baby comes barreling out of his bedroom doing a different dance with a different animal, obviously not sleeping!  First, he polkas with the polka-dotted pig.  Then he boogie-woogies with the frisky little goat, then he cha-chas with the chocolate-colored cow.  You get the idea.

One of our favorite parts when we're reading aloud is opening the flap that shows the polka-ing or cha-cha-ing or boogie-woogie-ing baby and animal, with the last word (the animal) written under the flap.  Lorelei yells it out in her biggest outside voice.  And Ben says "EH!" his favorite word for most everything.  It makes me laugh, and it makes them laugh, and that makes this a great, great book. 

Lorelei ripped the last two pages of the book when she was a baby, and the words are missing.  So when the kids get Daddy to read it, he has to yell from the other room: "What's the last verse?"  And I shout out the words because they are etched in my memory.  For months we'd recite this walking to the mailbox and back, even though we left the book at home.  I am willing to bet that I'll be able to recite it in twenty years, too!