My Recs for Kids' Books You Won't Hate

The good, the bad, and the TV spinoffs (the worst).

I love kids’ books. I adore picture books, love chapter books for kids, and still dip into reading YA novels all the time. I was an avid reader as a kid and grew up to be a writer. But in this season of my life, when I barely have time to listen to 1/357th of an audiobook while I fold laundry, much of my reading is out loud to my kids. That’s ok, though, because like I said, I really, really love kids’ books. But also I really, really hate kids’ books. Because there are some really bad kids’ books and one of my jobs as a parent (I have decided) is to keep these books out of my house as much as possible and fill it instead with good kids’ books.

Here are some of the things I dislike in kids’ books, and the types of books I personally wouldn’t buy for my kids (although, we do often get books like these as gifts and I let them stay! And of course, the kids do love them sometimes. But you can’t trust kids, they really have no taste.)

Cheap Use of Licensed Characters

I don’t get my kids books that are just TV and movie characters in book form. I’m reading to them, not playing their favorite show in their head. If they want to watch TV they can do that on their own time. No Disney character books, no Spider-man books, (yes, I know he was a comic book character first, but you get what I mean, don’t play dumb), and certainly no Blippi/Cocomelon/Whatever-YouTube-show-is-currently-making-millions-of-dollars books. Basically, anything that is just a clear money grab and was written by robots and/or underpaid copywriters preying on the parents of children who will always pick the most familiar TV-adjacent thing they can. My kids don’t get off that easy, I’m afraid.

Books Written by Celebrities That Aren’t Writers

For some reason, every celebrity thinks they can write a kids’ book. Get out of here, Kristen Bell with your purple people! Celebrity kids’ books are always too sentimental, full of bland, simple messages like “love yourself” or “we are all different but special!” but lack any sort of interesting story or characters to show us these things. Just scan through celebrity books and they all have basically the same title, something along the lines of “The World Needs You Because You Are Special.” (I’m worried this might actually be the title of Kathie Lee Gifford’s book.)

Books About How Much Parents Love Their Kids

To kids, it’s a given that you love them, why would they read a whole book about it? They don’t care. This is a clear attempt to make parents cry and buy the same book for their sister to make her cry. I won’t stand for it.

Books That Were Clearly Written for Woke Parents to Give Other Woke Parents at Baby Showers

I hate to use this term but you know the books I mean. It’s not that I disagree with the message of these books, it’s just that for a kid, reading a book that lists the ways a baby is a feminist is way less interesting (and less effective) than reading them a book where a character embodies those values within the story.

Books About Poop and Tacos and Farting and Magical Creatures Pooping and Farting and Eating Tacos

These books have titles like “Even Superheroes Fart” or “Zoinks! A Leprechaun Unicorn Ate My Baloney Taco and Pooped it Out!” I don’t know how to describe these books but there was something that happened in the mid 2010s where kids books got ZANY! And the whole point of the book stopped being a fun story and started being about, “Can you believe how ZANY this book is?”

Now that I’ve ranted about the types of books I do not like, here are some picture books I (and my kids) really like. I am mostly including more recent books, because although there are lots of amazing classic kids’ books, I’m not going to waste your time assuming you’ve never heard of Where the Wild Things Are.

Hot Dog by Doug Salati

I love this book so much. It barely has any words but the illustrations tell the story of a woman in New York city who, on a very hot day, decides she and her dog have had enough, and they take off to an island at the beach. It conjures up very specific feelings of summer and escape and joy.

Dragon Post by Emma Yarlett

Reminiscent of The Jolly Postman, this book is about a boy who finds himself with a dragon in his house and contains letters you pull out and read. Kids love pulling out the letters, which are full of silly puns.

Chirri and Chirra series by Kaya Doi

I just love this series about two twin girls who ride their bikes around the woods. They meet different woodland creatures and do various cozy things like drinking acorn coffee and eating jam sandwiches. The illustrations are so nice, with lots of little things to look for.

Usborne’s A Look Inside Animal Homes by Emily Bone (Author), Maribel Lechuga (Illustrator)

I have banned flap books at bedtime because they take SO LONG to read, but for day time I basically love all the Usborne flap books. This one, which shows how different animals build their houses, is a particular favorite of my animal-loving kids.

The Old Truck by Jerome Pumphrey and Jarrett Pumphrey

I love the illustrations in this book, which are made from stamps. It depicts a family of farmers and the girl who grows up to be a farmer, too.

All Around Bustletown series by Rotraut Susanne Berner

There are five books in this series, no words, just images of a bustling town somewhere in Europe that looks much more idyllic than whatever the hell is going on in this country. Each page is one part of the town and the scene continues in time and space on the next page, as you follow along with the characters’ day. We’ve looked at these so many times and I still find new little stories every time.

The Day the Babies Crawled Away by Peggy Rathmann

For me this is a really good example of a book that is actually quite sentimental and about how much parents love their kids (it makes me cry every time), but is doing it in a really interesting way that’s driven by the story, not the sentiment. My kids love the baby who think she’s a bat.

Crossings: Extraordinary Structures for Extraordinary Animals by Katy S. Duffield (Author), Mike Orodán (Illustrator)

Got this one recently on a whim at the library and it turned out to be a huge favorite. It's about the different ways people have created crossings for animals over highways, it's very specific! But if you have a young kid who loves animals AND vehicles (like mine!) it’s a really cool book to show the ways humans think about helping animals to deal with our infrastructure when it interferes with their habitats. My kind-hearted animal-loving son loved this book.

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Now, we’d love to hear from you! What are your favorite children’s books, and what are the tropes you absolutely can’t stand?