Maybe one should play Wagner’s Der Ring der Nibelungen (Ring Cycle - a series of, like, 4-6 great operas, performed, one after the other, on my 13 CD copy, I have the whole Ring Cycle (Die Walkure, Lohengrin, Gotterdammerung and, about 3 others). That would be a good way to give your infant some culture, even though the baby doesn’t know WTF “culture” means (or how to say it)! But it could set the stage for a possible, if this went the way one hoped, appreciation for music.

Maybe even a 4 year old.

One thing I remember my father reading to me, as a bedtime story was Poe’s The Raven. I loved the story that makes up this poem. Another Poe poem he read to me now and then was his beautiful, haunting elegy for his Annabel Lee (sp? -1 word?), one of my favorite poems of Poe’s, apart from the great stories he wrote.

Well, for a “children’s book”, The Hobbit is certainly, at least one of the best examples of a book written to, for or towards children; not unlike the beautiful language that Lewis Carroll (ne Charles L. Dodge, a mathematics “lecturer” at Christ Church, Oxford, London). His two “Alice” stories were written, also, in a way that never talked down to children.

I remember reading The Hobbit at quite a young age. I know I saw the animated TV version of The Hobbit (yeah, it was The Hobbit, not Lord of the Rings). It’s a fantastic story for readers of all ages!

"OK" seems to be pretty universal, or nearly, anyway.