Your Baby Can Read!

Robert Titzer, Ph.D., designer of the Your Baby Can Read! program has a very gifted daughter named Aleka who, at 4-years-old, could read at a 12th-grade level thanks to home video prototypes of this tape...according to the promotional literature accompanying this video. I doubt it. Titzer's daughter may well be able to read rings around most senior high schoolers, but she had more help than this "revolutionary video," the "first reading video designed for infants." Looking like something that hasn't moved far from the "home video prototype," the program offers a series of action, animal, and body words (without any apparent rhyme or reason that I could discern), a couple of songs, and repeats the whole shebang (with the words sometimes used in a slightly different context). Call me old-fashioned but I think a good mom or dad with a steady supply of picture books will be far more successful than this program that's unlikely to sustain the interest of the intended audience of "3 months to 2 years." Any number of read-along or sing-along videos are superior, and parents with newer TV's can always turn their closed captioned decoders on while watching quality kids' programming. Not recommended. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)