Choosing Children’s Books
For Drake’s birthday, his grammy kindly sent a bookstore gift card. It was burning a hole in G. Grod’s wallet so we went book shopping this weekend. Plus, I think G. may have harbored a small hope that maybe he or I could justify getting something for ourselves, like the new TPB–trade paperback–of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, or the Low CD The Great Destroyer. We were good, though. We used it all on Drake.
Choosing children’s books has been more of a learning curve for me than I would have thought. My mom thoughtfully kept all the books from when my sisters and I were young, and I oversaw the kids’ section of a large used book store for a year. I felt pretty knowledgeable about kids’ books. But a former colleague from the bookstore shared that he spent years collecting a tremendous children’s library, yet all his kids want to read is Pokemon. Like him, having a kid sharpened my appreciation for what really works. Omnibus collections of multiple stories (George and Martha, Curious George, and Madeleine all have these) are heavy for toddlers to lift and too long to read in one setting, causing tears once the book is shut. Deluxe editions, like The Essential Eloise by Kay Thompson, contain extras that might be interesting to adults, but do not make easy reading to children. And some stories are just disliked, either by parents or by the kid. Both my husband and I dislike Curious George stories, which are long, disjointed and often feature odd or disturbing details, like George being kidnapped from the jungle and later smoking. Other books are fine once or twice, but can become tiresome when asked for several times in a row. Some of our books receive a temporary, and some a permanent, time out. Some of Drake’s favorite books are classics from when I was a child, like Bedtime for Frances, but some of the most successful new books we’ve acquired have been recommendations from other parents. Pancakes, Pancakes by Eric Carle, and several of the mouse books by Kevin Henkes are now well-loved and oft-read books in our library.
As I struggled to winnow our choices, I was reminded why we normally shop in used book stores. Yes, there are some dodgy ethics about the author not getting the proceeds, but I just can’t argue with the sheer bang for the buck of the used books. (Last week, for example, we got 11 books–one for us, 10 for Drake–for $30.)
New bookstores, though, have their own joys, like a wide selection, including new releases, of non-shabby books. I was torn by all the choices, though. Should we get new books, classics, hardcovers, paperbacks? Just as I’d finally made my decisions, G. Grod drew my attention to the book clutched in Drake’s hand. He’d made a choice of his own, so I had to put back a copy of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. Here are our new books. Try to guess which was Drake’s pick.
Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
Swimmy by Leo Lionni
Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton
Lift the Flap: Things That Go
I Am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go to Bed by Lauren Child
August 30th, 2005 at 7:00 pm
I’m guessing “Things That Go” was Drew’s choice. Be prepared for little torn off bits of cardboard…
August 31st, 2005 at 5:59 am
that’s my guess too!
August 31st, 2005 at 6:23 am
It was indeed Things That Go. Drake is not exactly a master of subtlety, just yet. He held the book and made fire truck noises all the way home, and we’ve had to read it at least half a dozen times a day. But he is also asking by name for Make Way for Ducklings, and he repeats the noise “Weebk” that the father duck makes when he is nearly run over. No missing cardboard, yet, Becca, a la Dinosaur’s Binkit. I was hoping that since he’s older, it might not suffer in the same way.
September 1st, 2005 at 10:00 am
Lissa is in LOVE with Charlie and Lola. Aboslute love. Usually she’s more of a pixar animation girl (I think because a horse in Pixar looks like like a real horse she can touch etc.) but LOVES Charlie and Lola on the Disney channel (especially their accents) and in books (she’s amassing quite the collection we’ve had to limit it to only two Charlie and Lola books an evening before bed.
September 1st, 2005 at 3:29 pm
I passed over the Charlie and Lola kindergarten book since the bedtime one seemed more appropriate for Drake at 2. I’ll have to give the others a look at the library, though, because this is EXACTLY the kind of useful recommendation from another mom that usually ends up with working well for us, too. (In addition to Kevin Henkes books, I learned about mandarin oranges and yogurt covered raisins from other moms, and Drake would be sad without them.)