books for toddler

Some library trips we come home with twenty books and none of them are any good. Other trips, like this last one, we come home with ten books, and they all rock. Luke is now three years old, but even if your child is a little older or younger, check them out! As with all children’s books, different books appeal to different kids for different reasons.

Batty by Sarah Dyer: Batty isn’t the most popular animal at the zoo, so he decides to try being more like the other animals. Super cute book about being yourself. Luke loves this book because some of the pictures are from Batty’s perspective…upside down, that is. He loves turning the book over to view the illustrations right side up. Very well done.

Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard: One morning Bird wakes up in a foul mood. He doesn’t want to eat, play, or even fly. So he starts walking. Along the way he meets a host of animals, each of which eventually joins him on his walk. Soon, the walk turns into a game, and Bird’s bad mood is gone. Illustrations are bold and simple. Text is spare and repetitive (perfect for toddlers/preschoolers). A super cute story.

Froodle by Antoinette Portis: Four birds sing the same song day in and day out…until one day when the little brown bird decides to try something different. Something silly. Something like, “Froodle!” A really cute, well-done book about how much fun it can be to break from the usual every once in awhile. Illustrations are great. Text is simple enough for early readers. Luke says that he likes the words “blurv” and “inkpadink” the best.

Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein: Little chicken LOVES her bedtime stories. She loves them so much that she can’t help but interrupt her father’s reading every time. Papa starts stories only to have little chicken leap into the story (literally–she is actually drawn into the storybook pages) and save the characters from disaster. This is a Caldecott honor book, so the illustrations are fun, and the text is simple enough for preschoolers. Luke thinks little chicken is pretty funny.

Cheese Belongs to You!: by Alexis Deacon and Viviane Schwarz: This is Rat Law: cheese belongs to you…unless a big rat wants it…unless a bigger rat wants it…unless a faster rat wants it…unless… and on and on. Luke gets a huge kick out of the dirty rat (we do lots of nose holding and ewww-ing) and the hairy rat (gross), and he enjoys watching the story build. What’s funny is that the ending is all about how nice it is to share, but Luke usually walks away for the last two pages. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t know how to share very well?

Come Back, Ben by John Hassett and Ann Hassett: Luke can read this book independently. Simple, repetitive text is great for the newest readers. And for such an early reader book, it’s actually really cute. Ben goes up and up holding onto his balloon, and everything he passes says, “Come back, Ben!” including the window, a tree, some bees, a big hill, etc. He finally reaches the moon, where he fills his pockets with moon rocks and floats gently back home. Luke really enjoys reading this book, in part because it’s easy enough for him to read by himself, and in part because we’ve started doing baby signs with Brynn (3 months old) and we can sign almost the entire book. Fun!

Clicking on the books will take you to Amazon.com, and if you decide to buy the book, a portion of your purchase comes back to me. I, in turn, will use the profits to purchase books for our local library or for a children’s literacy project.

The first short list of my favorite books from when I turned one to when I turned two:

Five Little Pumpkins (Harper Growing Tree) illustrated by Dan Yaccarino: I loved this book when I first turned one. The classic rhyme has been illustrated by many different artists, but this particular version appealed to me most. The illustrations are brightly colored with larger graphics, and they are simple yet filled with expression. In addition to counting, my Mama and Dada liked to talk about colors and do some baby signs (moon, cat, ghost–floating hand with “ooooooo” sound), too.

Horns to Toes and in Between by Sandra Boynton: Ahhh….Sandra Boynton. Genius. Poet. Humorist. All for us little ones! My Mama was teaching me body parts, and this book is one of the “body parts books” that I really liked.

What Will Fat Cat Sit On? by Jan Thomas: Speaking of humorists, Jan Thomas is pretty darn funny, too. I loved this book because of the built-in theatrics. It’s impossible to read this book without using exaggerated inflection (which helps us little ones hear word parts more clearly), and the situation is clearly urgent (especially for the various animals Fat Cat might just pop a squat on) and very funny. The text is also simple, very large, and with few words to a page so children begin to see how individual words are separated.

How to Catch An Elephant by Amy Schwartz: Oh boy. I read this book over and over and over and over again with both Mama and Dada for a full year. It’s much longer and more involved than any other book I really liked in this period. Really, it’s more like a book for a three year old, but I loved it because of the foot stomping and the elephant sounds and the repetition and the complexity of the puzzle. The resolution is a fairly tough idea for a little person (inverted telescope makes the elephant smaller), but that’s part of the reason I liked it. It was challenging!

Mama’s note: This last book was a stretch for Luke, but it exposed him to more advanced vocabulary, sentence structure, and plot line. He requested it multiple times a day for a very long time. We wore out the renewals at our library (12 weeks all told), and then I finally bought a copy. My first record of us reading it was at 12.5 months, and we read it six times that day!

Happy reading!

—Luke (blog co-star, age two and a half)

morebooksmama

Hitting the Jackpot: Random Library Picks That Luke Loves

Weekly Bookshelf–Books for One to Two Year Olds–Installment 1