Sign Of The Times: HTML For Babies

Each year it seems there’s a hot new book for babies (but really more for parents) that makes its rounds among hipster parents. When my older son, now six, was born, it was a beautiful little hardcover book called This Little Piggy Went To Prada: Nursery Rhymes for the Blahnik Brigade. It was tongue-in-cheek, to be sure, but so funny and entertaining, I kept it out on my night table (plus, it’s pretty much advanced reading for a new mom averaging three hours of sleep per night in 20-minute increments).

The latest book on tech- and design-savvy parents’ radar is HTML For Babies. As the description reads: “Show your little ones HTML markup code along with letter forms to get them started on the visual patterns and symbols that make up the essential building blocks of the Web.”

It would be easy to roll your eyes at this book; I did, at first, but then I got over it. Like Urban Babies Wear Black, a book that I received as a gift not once but four times when my son was born, HTML For Babies is more of a statement on our modern world than a call to action.

Sure, it conjures up images of stressed out, glass-eyed mini-geeks, but it’s sooooo 2011.

(Photo: amazon.com)