Things to Read - Kids' Books II

Winter = lots of snow days and sick days = lots of book reading. It has been a few months since I wrote just a general post on the books we've been reading (click here to see the last post), so scroll down to see the books that we can't get enough of:

For Toddlers:

A friend bought this for T when he was a baby and he still loves it. It's a book, it's a puppet, it's a song . . . For T it's the best of everything.

For Kids Ages 2.5-6:

We love Knuffle Bunny so much that I figured we'd try more of Mo Willems' books. Though very different from Knuffle Bunny, this short, simple, gorgeously illustrated story of a dog/frog friendship is a favorite of all three kids. Plus, the ambiguous ending (what happens to the frog?) leaves openings for parents to talk about death with their kids (if you choose to do so).


The perfect going-to-bed book. Gorgeously illustrated, full of simple statements documenting different types of quiet - Hide-and-seek quiet, Lollipop quiet, Top of the roller coaster quiet, and, of course, Sound asleep quiet.


Another beautifully illustrated, simple, short book (I find that now that F is learning to read, she really likes these simple books as they help her practice sounding out words). The plot centers on the friendship of a little boy and a penguin. It's so beautiful that we bought the sequel Up and Down, which is also quite good.

For slightly older kids (ages 4-8):

First of all, the book and the movie have little in common. Rather, the book tells the story of an imaginary place (the town of Chewandswallow) where meals fall from the sky. Everyone is happy until unforseen weather catastrophes force the townspeople to abandon their land. I'm convinced the whole thing is really a metephor for global warming. But even if you're not an environmentalist, you'll love the well-told story and beautiful illustrations.


A close friend bought this book for the girls when they were little because it was her favorite story as a child. The plot centers on the exclusion of non-star-bellied sneetches by sneetches with "stars on thars." It's a great story, but the girls didn't seem to quite understand the moral until this year. Now we've been reading it a lot and F likes to talk about the how ridiculous people (or sneetches) can be.


I remember reading this book as a kindergartner and loving the "funny poems." So I bought it for the girls and they can't get enough of it, every night we keep hearing "read one more. PLEASE!"


F's been reading a lot of Bob books lately. They really are perfect for beginning readers, as they give them just the right amount of confidence to keep trying new books and reading more. We've moved onto this set - Bob Books Set 2-Advancing Beginners and hopefully we'll keep moving forward to more difficult sets in the series.