Discerning richly contrasting black-and-white visual stimuli is one of the most important characteristics of early childhood sensory development. One of The Getty Museum's greatest collecting strengths is photography. When considered together, the solution is obvious: put infants to work studying the Getty's collection of work by the likes of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz, and Julia Margaret Cameron. The alphabet is just gravy.
Actually, an 8x8-inch paper book appears to lack either the durability of a boardbook or the enthralling scale of a big picture book. Still, for ten bucks, it may be worth a shot. [Or maybe you just buy ten copies of various Terra Magica photobooks published back in the day by Hanns Reich, same diff.]
Buy P Is For Peanut: A Photographic Alphabet for $9.95 at Amazon [amazon]
Previously: Hanns Reich's Children and their Fathers and other awesome B&W photobooks
This looks really lovely. Why not take the book apart, laminate the pages and then put the pages back together on two or three rings? That way they would be baby proof and still lovely.