I'm placing holds at the library right now! We also enjoyed Hot Dog and Chirri and Chirra, but haven't read the others.
My recs:
-Trouble with Trolls, Berlioz the Bear, Gingerbread Baby and Hedgie's Surprise, all by Jan Brett (the illustrations are gorgeous and detailed, and the stories are so fun! Brett is a PROLIFIC creator but I personally think her books from like pre-2005 are the best).
-The Big Green Pocketbook by Candace Ransom (adorable day in the life story about a little girl and her mom running errands, with a bit of suspense and a happy ending)
-Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco (love those illustrations and the cozy no-nonsense Babushka)
-King Baby by Kate Beaton (so funny but not zany just for the sake of it)
-Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews (captures the poignancy of getting to be a big kid along with the wonder and angst of new responsibilities!)
-Rattletrap Car by Phyllis Root (love the cadence of this one and the warm round bright illustrations)
Literally anything by Shirley Hughes, her books have such fun slices of life in toddler and preschooler worlds, and the homes she draws are so messy and relatable! We adore the Alfie books most of all.
My cautionary tales:
I'm so tired of counting books that don't actually have a STORY with them. Stop it. Also the newer Berenstain Bears are so sanctimonious and flat. I never get them from the library if I can help it but my kids love the characters. The originals are mostly great! We love the OG rhyming ones like The Bike Lesson and the older stories like Too Much Vacation and Too Much Birthday but the Mike Berenstain ones feel like ursine Christian Nationalism. Ugh.
Amy, you are so right about Jan Brett. And, about Berenstain Bears. Let me add I refuse to read Lucy’s kids Little Critter books. Let’s Patricia Polaco’s books, especially Thunder Cake.
Oh, what experts we become on this subject. My favorite board book is I'm the Biggest Thing in This Ocean, about a boastful squid swimming up and comparing himself to the size of various sea creatures (he gets his comeuppance in a hilarious way). I'm a big fan of all of Sherri Duskey Rinker and Virginia Lee Burtons books, since they feature heavy equipment (my son's favorite) and decent plot and rhymes (helps with the 400th reading). Lastly, my favorite genre of story is just "magical realism for real stuff kids go through," like a book where a child gets their pet octopus ready for school. My son isn't much for chatting about abstract subjects, so books that just, like, show him what going to the dentist is like, are quite helpful for adding to his vision of what life is like.
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney permanently altered my personality, i still think about it every day, you all need to read it to your children, k thanks
(really, anything by Barbara Cooney or Jan Brett is <333)
THANK YOU! I have been looking for good choices for my 2yo! Everything seems to be for babies or 4+!
For other book recs (especially for slightly older kids) I'd recommend Betsy Bird's annual 31 days, 31 lists yearly roundup over at the School Library Journal. She does a different type of book each day, and her recommendations are INTERESTING.
A couple board books for the little one that we enjoyed are The Pout-Pout Fish, There's a Bear in my Chair, the Sheep books like Sheep in a Jeep & Sheep Go to Sleep, Little Blue Truck, & The Bear Snores On.
They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel is a favorite of mine— the illustrations are beautiful.
When my oldest was little we really liked Thank You, Bear by Greg Foley— felt like it did a good job of imparting a nice message without being preachy or too didactic.
My son LOVES Ten Little Ninjas by Miranda Paul— it’s a play on the ten little monkeys bouncing on the bed song, but the pictures are really great & it’s pretty inventive. (The 10th time we read it my husband said, “you have such a fun way of reading that” & that’s how I learned he’d never heard the 10 Little monkeys song.)
Our children have children of their own, but some of my favorite memories include:
Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud by Lynn Plourde
and
The Seven Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hoberman
We also set aside one (often two) evenings a week as a whole family of seven to read “older people” books like the Anne of Green Gables series, The Yearling (which was the biggest family hit) and Old Yeller (all of which were great books before they became movies).
I feel so seen by that picture where she's absolutely losing it in the kitchen surrounded by 6 different meals and a metric ton of unfolded laundry 😂😂😂
The Day the Babies Crawled Away is my absolute favorite children’s book and I didn’t think anyone else had ever heard of it! Whenever the sky is that beautiful shade of orangey blue after sunset my husband and I say “hey! It’s the day the babies crawled away.” The last page was created to make parents cry.
My kids are a bit older now, but I always loved the Peter Brown books, especially “You Will be my Friend!” and “The Curious Garden.”
We unfortunately have way too many Paw Patrol and Disney books in the house so this list is refreshing. The celeb "authored" books are my biggest pet peeve, a bestselling one by Jimmy Fallon is literally just one word per page! Infuriating. I love these recs, going to start a library list. I have twin girls so we already have one of the Chirri and Chirra books but I didn't realize there were so many others, they are so pretty. The Bustletown book looks great but is it a ripoff of the Busytown books by Richard Scarry? Crossings looks perfect for my animal-obsessed kids. Here are some of our favorites:
-Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry - We've been given a number of Black pride kids books by well-meaning friends and some are not great, but this one is delightful (also the dad in the book looks a lot like my husband so my girls call it "the daddy book")
-The Fire Cat By Esther Averill - older book from my childhood about a brave cat who helps the fire department
-The Leaf Thief by Alice Hemming very funny and cute fall book about a neurotic squirrel. It's fun to do his voice.
We've read every Busytown book a million times and I'm always trying to get my kids to try Bustletown too. My 2.5 year old is hit or miss on Bustletown, the 4.5 year old is more into it. They're similar in concept but I much prefer Bustletown. My kids are both obsessed with spotting Goldbug in C&T&TTG (IYKYK) and Bustletown is great for that -- lots of recurring characters to spot on every page.
I adore The Bear Ate Your Sandwich, the illustrations are beautiful & the story is cute. We also love Escargot (best read in a French accent), The Worst/Best Poet, Be Quiet!, Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type, Hats are Not for Cats, The Snowmen at Night, & Off-limits.
My kids' current favorites are Bus Stops by Taro Gomi (so delightful and chill, almost meditative), Ten Little Babies by Gyo Fujikawa, and allllll the Richard Scarry. So much Richard Scarry.
This is proof that we are related! I would add two old books that are still being published:
William’s Doll by Charlot Zolotow, a sweet story written in 1972 about a little boy that really wants…a doll.
Hazel’s Amazing Mother by Rosemary Wells. Why Hazel is allowed to set off alone into town is a bit baffling, but the townsfolk seem to know her. She gets lost, natch, but the magical power of mama love reunites the two after harrowing mistreatment.
Thanks for this! As a writer and reader of kids’ books, this is a topic close to my heart.
A category of book that annoys me is the “librarian bait” books. These have a lot of overlap with the woke books. They’re books that are made to appeal to middle age white ladies— not kids. They get good reviews and win awards and not a single kid in the world actually wants to read them.
A picture book that gets read almost daily in our house is Grumpy Monkey. It’s beautifully illustrated, humorous, and doesn’t make the parents want to put a power drill to the forehead after the third reading (always a plus).
The ultimate example, I think, is “Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood.” I understand the sentiment behind the book. The publisher went all out to promote it. And a lot of well meaning guilty white people bought the book. It was a NY Times Bestseller. But I think most actual black kids would rather read a fun story that just happens to feature black characters than something that “celebrates” their “joy.”
My kids were nuts about baking books that fit their personalities -- one was obsessed with Pancakes, Pancakes (instructive) and the other loved The Duchess Bakes a Cake (silly, with fun vocabulary).
The worst part about the TV books is that the text is always just a vague, banal plot summary. We had a Frozen II book that I read before I had watched the movie. It contained zero spoilers because it had absolutely nothing interesting in it. Just "And then the characters went to this place and talked to these people"
I know! I bought a Frozen 2 book for my daughter because it came with these plastic figures I wanted for her birthday cake and literally its like 5 pages and each page is just a description of the characters and they got one of the character's names wrong.
Wow, that's so bad! I don't think I would mind giving my kids books from cartoons that I don't let them watch if they would just do a nice job of telling the story from the episode.
The Moonrat and the White Turtle by Helen Ward - 35 years out of print, but sometimes it turns up for a good used price or you might be able to ILL it
and I haven't reread it lately so it might not have aged well, but the opening line of Margaret Wise Brown's The Sailor Dog has lived rent-free in my head for decades
I'm placing holds at the library right now! We also enjoyed Hot Dog and Chirri and Chirra, but haven't read the others.
My recs:
-Trouble with Trolls, Berlioz the Bear, Gingerbread Baby and Hedgie's Surprise, all by Jan Brett (the illustrations are gorgeous and detailed, and the stories are so fun! Brett is a PROLIFIC creator but I personally think her books from like pre-2005 are the best).
-The Big Green Pocketbook by Candace Ransom (adorable day in the life story about a little girl and her mom running errands, with a bit of suspense and a happy ending)
-Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco (love those illustrations and the cozy no-nonsense Babushka)
-King Baby by Kate Beaton (so funny but not zany just for the sake of it)
-Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews (captures the poignancy of getting to be a big kid along with the wonder and angst of new responsibilities!)
-Rattletrap Car by Phyllis Root (love the cadence of this one and the warm round bright illustrations)
Literally anything by Shirley Hughes, her books have such fun slices of life in toddler and preschooler worlds, and the homes she draws are so messy and relatable! We adore the Alfie books most of all.
My cautionary tales:
I'm so tired of counting books that don't actually have a STORY with them. Stop it. Also the newer Berenstain Bears are so sanctimonious and flat. I never get them from the library if I can help it but my kids love the characters. The originals are mostly great! We love the OG rhyming ones like The Bike Lesson and the older stories like Too Much Vacation and Too Much Birthday but the Mike Berenstain ones feel like ursine Christian Nationalism. Ugh.
"ursine Christian Nationalism" this prospect terrifies me
Trouble With Trolls is so good!!!
Amy, you are so right about Jan Brett. And, about Berenstain Bears. Let me add I refuse to read Lucy’s kids Little Critter books. Let’s Patricia Polaco’s books, especially Thunder Cake.
Oh, I have to disagree with you there! We love Little Critter. He's such a grouch. 😂
Isn’t it great that we all like different books? 🥰
Oh, what experts we become on this subject. My favorite board book is I'm the Biggest Thing in This Ocean, about a boastful squid swimming up and comparing himself to the size of various sea creatures (he gets his comeuppance in a hilarious way). I'm a big fan of all of Sherri Duskey Rinker and Virginia Lee Burtons books, since they feature heavy equipment (my son's favorite) and decent plot and rhymes (helps with the 400th reading). Lastly, my favorite genre of story is just "magical realism for real stuff kids go through," like a book where a child gets their pet octopus ready for school. My son isn't much for chatting about abstract subjects, so books that just, like, show him what going to the dentist is like, are quite helpful for adding to his vision of what life is like.
I almost included The Little House by VLB! I love her books too!
Virginia Lee Burton is elite.
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney permanently altered my personality, i still think about it every day, you all need to read it to your children, k thanks
(really, anything by Barbara Cooney or Jan Brett is <333)
THANK YOU! I have been looking for good choices for my 2yo! Everything seems to be for babies or 4+!
For other book recs (especially for slightly older kids) I'd recommend Betsy Bird's annual 31 days, 31 lists yearly roundup over at the School Library Journal. She does a different type of book each day, and her recommendations are INTERESTING.
A couple board books for the little one that we enjoyed are The Pout-Pout Fish, There's a Bear in my Chair, the Sheep books like Sheep in a Jeep & Sheep Go to Sleep, Little Blue Truck, & The Bear Snores On.
They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel is a favorite of mine— the illustrations are beautiful.
When my oldest was little we really liked Thank You, Bear by Greg Foley— felt like it did a good job of imparting a nice message without being preachy or too didactic.
My son LOVES Ten Little Ninjas by Miranda Paul— it’s a play on the ten little monkeys bouncing on the bed song, but the pictures are really great & it’s pretty inventive. (The 10th time we read it my husband said, “you have such a fun way of reading that” & that’s how I learned he’d never heard the 10 Little monkeys song.)
Our children have children of their own, but some of my favorite memories include:
Pigs in the Mud in the Middle of the Rud by Lynn Plourde
and
The Seven Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hoberman
We also set aside one (often two) evenings a week as a whole family of seven to read “older people” books like the Anne of Green Gables series, The Yearling (which was the biggest family hit) and Old Yeller (all of which were great books before they became movies).
I adore The Seven Sully Eaters. Mrs. Peter’s was a saint.
I feel so seen by that picture where she's absolutely losing it in the kitchen surrounded by 6 different meals and a metric ton of unfolded laundry 😂😂😂
*silly. I DID type silly.
The Day the Babies Crawled Away is my absolute favorite children’s book and I didn’t think anyone else had ever heard of it! Whenever the sky is that beautiful shade of orangey blue after sunset my husband and I say “hey! It’s the day the babies crawled away.” The last page was created to make parents cry.
My kids are a bit older now, but I always loved the Peter Brown books, especially “You Will be my Friend!” and “The Curious Garden.”
We unfortunately have way too many Paw Patrol and Disney books in the house so this list is refreshing. The celeb "authored" books are my biggest pet peeve, a bestselling one by Jimmy Fallon is literally just one word per page! Infuriating. I love these recs, going to start a library list. I have twin girls so we already have one of the Chirri and Chirra books but I didn't realize there were so many others, they are so pretty. The Bustletown book looks great but is it a ripoff of the Busytown books by Richard Scarry? Crossings looks perfect for my animal-obsessed kids. Here are some of our favorites:
-Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry - We've been given a number of Black pride kids books by well-meaning friends and some are not great, but this one is delightful (also the dad in the book looks a lot like my husband so my girls call it "the daddy book")
-The Fire Cat By Esther Averill - older book from my childhood about a brave cat who helps the fire department
-The Leaf Thief by Alice Hemming very funny and cute fall book about a neurotic squirrel. It's fun to do his voice.
Bustletown is def not a rip off of Busytown! Very different. We like Hair Love, too!!
We've read every Busytown book a million times and I'm always trying to get my kids to try Bustletown too. My 2.5 year old is hit or miss on Bustletown, the 4.5 year old is more into it. They're similar in concept but I much prefer Bustletown. My kids are both obsessed with spotting Goldbug in C&T&TTG (IYKYK) and Bustletown is great for that -- lots of recurring characters to spot on every page.
I adore The Bear Ate Your Sandwich, the illustrations are beautiful & the story is cute. We also love Escargot (best read in a French accent), The Worst/Best Poet, Be Quiet!, Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type, Hats are Not for Cats, The Snowmen at Night, & Off-limits.
My kids' current favorites are Bus Stops by Taro Gomi (so delightful and chill, almost meditative), Ten Little Babies by Gyo Fujikawa, and allllll the Richard Scarry. So much Richard Scarry.
This is proof that we are related! I would add two old books that are still being published:
William’s Doll by Charlot Zolotow, a sweet story written in 1972 about a little boy that really wants…a doll.
Hazel’s Amazing Mother by Rosemary Wells. Why Hazel is allowed to set off alone into town is a bit baffling, but the townsfolk seem to know her. She gets lost, natch, but the magical power of mama love reunites the two after harrowing mistreatment.
Thanks for this! As a writer and reader of kids’ books, this is a topic close to my heart.
A category of book that annoys me is the “librarian bait” books. These have a lot of overlap with the woke books. They’re books that are made to appeal to middle age white ladies— not kids. They get good reviews and win awards and not a single kid in the world actually wants to read them.
A picture book that gets read almost daily in our house is Grumpy Monkey. It’s beautifully illustrated, humorous, and doesn’t make the parents want to put a power drill to the forehead after the third reading (always a plus).
Ohhh would love to know some examples of the librarian bait books
The ultimate example, I think, is “Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood.” I understand the sentiment behind the book. The publisher went all out to promote it. And a lot of well meaning guilty white people bought the book. It was a NY Times Bestseller. But I think most actual black kids would rather read a fun story that just happens to feature black characters than something that “celebrates” their “joy.”
My kids were nuts about baking books that fit their personalities -- one was obsessed with Pancakes, Pancakes (instructive) and the other loved The Duchess Bakes a Cake (silly, with fun vocabulary).
This one too, I forgot!! I Can Open It for You
Book by Shinsuke Yoshitake
The worst part about the TV books is that the text is always just a vague, banal plot summary. We had a Frozen II book that I read before I had watched the movie. It contained zero spoilers because it had absolutely nothing interesting in it. Just "And then the characters went to this place and talked to these people"
I know! I bought a Frozen 2 book for my daughter because it came with these plastic figures I wanted for her birthday cake and literally its like 5 pages and each page is just a description of the characters and they got one of the character's names wrong.
Wow, that's so bad! I don't think I would mind giving my kids books from cartoons that I don't let them watch if they would just do a nice job of telling the story from the episode.
The Moonrat and the White Turtle by Helen Ward - 35 years out of print, but sometimes it turns up for a good used price or you might be able to ILL it
and I haven't reread it lately so it might not have aged well, but the opening line of Margaret Wise Brown's The Sailor Dog has lived rent-free in my head for decades