Friday, March 06, 2009

Books We Love

To wrap up this week's series on reading, I thought I'd start a conversation about favorite books. WHAT do you read to your kiddos? We have some favorites so far, and I always love to hear about other people's beloved books. Some consistently popular choices in our house:

~The Very Hungry Caterpillar - This book is a classic for a reason--it's brilliant. Counting, the days of the week, food, and a beautiful story about a caterpillar's transformation. One of our first books, and I definitely have it memorized. Eric Carle has lots of wonderful books; we also enjoy Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? and the accompanying books in that series.

~Almost anything by Sandra Boynton. Our first books of hers were Boynton's Greatest Hits: Volume II (The Going to Bed Book, Horns to Toes, Opposites, But Not the Hippopotamus). These books bear repeated readings better than most of Elijah's other books--which was really important in those early days when we had very few options and were reading the same dozen books endlessly! We've since collected a lot more--I especially love Birthday Monsters! and Dinosaur's Binkit. Also, though we don't really look at the accompanying books much, I definitely recommend Boynton's music. Rhinoceros Tap is a road trip essential for us.

~One of the biggest reasons I'm passionate about Elijah reading is so that he can and will read God's Word. My two favorite children's Bible storybooks are The Jesus Storybook Bible and The Big Picture Story Bible.

Other hits:
~How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? (part of a series of "How Do Dinosaurs...?" books--we have two and hope to collect more)
~anything by Dr. Seuss--I know some people don't like him, but his books are well-loved at our house
~Guess How Much I Love You
~Ten Little Ladybugs - Elijah really likes to touch the 3-D bugs
~Move Over, Rover!

What books do you and your kids love?

4 comments:

ibeeeg said...

We, as well, love The Jesus Storybook Bible.

The following are also big hits:
Goodnight Gorilla
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do you See?
Olivia
There's a Wocket in my Pocket
Hedgie, Blasts Off!
Those are just a few titles...

Esther said...

"The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Red Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear", "How I Became a Pirate", "The Umbrella", and "All the Places to Love". The list goes on and on...I just did Wordfull Wednesday with Chocolate on My Cranium on the same topic...fun stuff. Here's a link if your interested in more :)

http://outwardexpression.blogspot.com/2009/02/ode-to-reading.html

Jill said...

Amy! What a great series. We LOVE reading with Sophie and Simon and both of them love it as well. We get a new stack at the library every couple weeks. Sophie is fascinated by the illustrations and the sing songy language. Some of our favorites are:
Everywhere Babies
Mommy Hugs and all of the like (Daddy Cuddles, Mommy loves, Daddy Kisses)
Llama Llama Red Pajama
Moo, Baa, La La La

I can't wait to pick up the Read Aloud Handbook!
Thanks again for the series. Very important topic!

Amy said...

Esther, I just checked All the Places to Love out from the library last week and read it to Elijah in the car Thursday night! I am anxious to read it again when I can get a good look at those gorgeous illustrations! Thanks for the link to your post.

Jill, I forgot about Llama, Llama--we don't have that one, but I've read it a couple of times and it is pretty cute!

Haven't ever heard of several of these you all mentioned, of course, so I've got some browsing to do :)