Sweet Book for Kids

The book A is for Adventure is a really great one for kids AND parents. All the activities are do-able and there are some great life messages snuck in amongst the rhymes.

My youngest loves Charlie and Lola books. My older two are into The Berenstein Bears and Fancy Nancy. This book you recommended would be great for my oldest.

Anything by Mo Willems – any of the Knuffle Bunny stories (Set in Brooklyn! You and the boys should check it out!) and the Pigeon stories.

Good call on the Make Way for Ducklings, from a Bostonian here!

Love reading your book recommendations! We recently bought “Cookies: Bite-Sized Life Lessons,” which describes character traits by talking about cookies – patience (waiting for them to bake), respect (offering the first cookie to your grandmother), generosity (sharing your cookies with friends), etc. Our 2-year-old loves it.

I love this! I think so many of us were taught not to cry, just like Alex. This is a beautiful way to talk about the range of human experience. It’s silly for us to try and deny ourselves (and tiny humans we care for) the full depth of our human experience.

I LOVE the book: The Day the Crayons Quit. I bought it for my nephews and niece and I think it’s fantastic!!! I will definitely look into this book as well! Thanks for the recommendation! xx yael

http://www.yaelsteren.com/blog/

Very sweet. Are there any books you, Joanna, or readers would recommend for an expectant first-time mom and dad to read to their newborn? I want to get books they can read to the child, but don’t know what genre that would be since board books seem to be for slightly older babies who will be grabbing for the actual book!

I love reading my toddler the Little Blue Truck books… the truck (a typically masculine character) is really nice and caring and I think is a good example, especially for a little boy.

…Though in reality I most of the time am reading a LOT of Thomas the Train books on heavy rotation… :)

for little, little ones: ‘Happy Hippo, Angry Duck’. it’s a Sarah Boynton board book about moods. My favorite line, ‘a difficult mood is not here to stay, everyone’s moods can change day to day.’ Sometimes I don’t know who’s benefitting more from hearing that line: me or my one year old.

I feel like you would like this. For little girls, yes, but for all kids. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/timbuktu/good-night-stories-for-rebel-girls-100-tales-to-dr

This is fantastic. I like that the story doesn’t mention gender itself, it’s unnecessary, but has a boy as the central character. I write children’s books and two sons who I get to test them on! Someone mentioned Rosie Revere – Iggy Peck Architect is amazing, by the same author. My eldest son and I both love All The World by Liz Garton Scanlon, and The Rain Train by Elena de Roo rhymes and flows perfectly and is so much fun to read aloud. It’s one of my favourites. Anything by Il Sung Na (so beautiful) is great, and Julia Donaldson’s The Snail and the Whale is a touching story. She gets rhythm so right, too. A Hole in the Botoom of the Sea is fun, and Bear and Bird is a lovely story of friendship.

Non-fiction – the Usborne lift the flap books are so so fun! Seriously, they’d be perfect for Tony and Anton right now. So much to discover and really well made.

My eldest son adores wordless books too, like the Red Shoes and David Wiesner’s Flotsam. Those books let children create their own story somewhat, and express their own experiences and feelings at arm’s length.

I could go on for so long…

This book sounds adorable!

This book makes me think about when my son was younger and we would read Mem Fox’s ‘Tough Boris’ about a tough pirate (spoiler) who cries when his parrot dies. My son is a little older now and we just started reading Harry Potter. I never read the series (or saw the movies) and we are having fun experiencing it together.