Feed Me Books Friday -- Hosting this week and sharing books no child should miss

I am delighted to be the guest host for my college friend Janna over at The Adventure of Motherhood, while she takes a break for one more week of Feed Me Books Friday!  I decided to share a couple of books that have risen to the tip-top of my daughter Susie's book choices lately.  Granted, at age 14 months, she is not the most discerning reader, but at the same time, children do know what they like and what they don't.  Here are a couple of books that Susie has consistently been bringing to Mommy and Daddy (saying "iss iss iss!!") and asking to read over and over.  You probably know these, but no child should miss out on them!

Reading with Daddy

The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone -- this is a book I had as a kid, and years ago found it to be still widely enjoyed by a variety of ages.  It is a classic read-aloud featuring Lovable, Furry Old Grover from Sesame Street begging the reader not to turn any more pages because he is frightened of the monster that will be at the end of the book.  Of course HE is the monster, and at the end is relieved to discover that his fear was for nothing, but throughout the pages are opportunities for the reader to border on hysterics acting out the range of Grover's emotions.  This is probably why I like reading the book -- because it's fun to be dramatic.  And that is probably why my baby likes us to read it to her.  She likes to see her parents being dramatic!  I'm such a sucker for Golden Books, which have stood the test of time offering decent books at a low price to millions of children through the generations.  How can you say no to spending $3.99 on a book your child will want to read again and again?  I know I can't!  Of course, I'm sure your library will have this book as well.

Mommy and Susie reading Brown Bear

Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. -- ok, true confession time.  I never used to like this book.  I like the illustrations, but I didn't think the words were interesting.  But I knew that kids like it, and when a sweet friend gave me this board book at a baby shower,  I knew, of course, that I would read it to my baby.  When Susie was really tiny, she would quickly become uninterested in looking at the pictures, so I kept setting it aside.  In the last few months, however, she has picked this book to read perhaps a thousand times!  If there is another child around, they will stop to listen.  Last weekend my sister in law was reading it out loud to 4 or 5 kiddos (mainly babies) at once, who were listening with rapt attention.  My nephew Max, who is now almost 3, had a "Brown Bear" themed first birthday party a couple of years ago.  It was his favorite book to say the least!  I think the style and rhythm of the book has become ingrained in his mind because the other day in the car I overheard him softly chanting to himself  "Susie, Susie, what do you see?  I see Maxy looking at me" and other variations based on the riders in our car.  Precious.  This is what a good book does.  It becomes part of the way you talk and think about the world.

I'm so glad you came by this week!  Please share what you and your children are reading -- or if you're like me and you read stacks of children's books long before you ever had a child of your own, please share a favorite by linking up below!  I'd love to come by and check out your recommendations.

I Am a Bunny

I love it when I find a classic book that is also fun and age-appropriate for a baby.  I Am a Bunny, illustrated by Richard Scarry, is just such a book!

Susie already loves this book.  It's sturdy, colorful, and a great tall size (the shape reminds me of another favorite -- Babies by Gyo Fujikawa).  Though the pictures have great detail and command attention, each page has a fairly short and simple phrase or sentence, which is ideal when reading to a squirmy baby!  


Recently Susie has started bringing me books to read her.  She'll whip one out of her basket and tell me "dat" (meaning "read that", I guess).  Usually after about 4 or 5 pages, she whips out another and tells me "dat".  Every once in a while, she likes to hear the whole thing and sometimes she hands it back to me and tells me "dat" again because she wants to hear it a second time!  That's really exciting to me!  The other day she started fussing when I started to stand up and I realized she was trying to hand me Brown Bear Brown Bear to read again.  You better bet I reread her those bookies just as many times as she'd like! 

Favorite Illustrators

There are some children's books I could just look through over and over, admiring their illustrations.  For picture books, the pictures tell as much of the story as the words, and are made truly precious when the artwork speaks for itself.  I love many, many classic illustrators, and quite a few new ones as well, but here are 2 of my favorites.  I am currently building my collection of these 2 illustrators -- someday I'd love to have everything they've done!  

1. Eloise Wilkin -- who doesn't know the chubby faces of Eloise Wilkin's children?  Her Golden Books in the 50's 60's and 70's are classics that generations have grown up with.  I have collected a good number of her timeless books, and in fact, I chose the Eloise Wilkin Baby Journal to use for a baby book for Susie, which has illustrations from several of her "Baby Dear" series of books.  I simply adore her chubby baby faces and joyful life-like actions of the babies.  

Another favorite from Wilkin is The Wonders of Nature.  May I recommend this book for some summertime outdoorsy exploration?  When I look through this book I want to be 8 again, wandering through the woods on our property in Wisconsin -- fishing in the river, finding deer paths, making forts in the trees and never ever hearing cars go past, just the rustle of the leaves all around you.  Today's children are often hurried from one activity to the next, involved in so many sports, lessons, playdates, etc. to "improve" them that they miss out on good old dirty fun.  Reading this book with your little ones and then getting out in the backyard or local park to explore (forget the weather! Just go out!) would make a wonderful summertime activity.

My all-time favorite Eloise Wilkin book is sadly out of print, We Help Daddy.  I am on the hunt to find it for Susie (yes I could order a used copy from Amazon, but I'm hoping to come upon it at Half Priced Books or something).  I have very old memories of being read this book by our babysitter and she changed the names of the boy and girl in the story to Gretchen and Nathan (my brother and me).  The next time my mother read us the book (correctly), I said "No!  Their names are Nathan and Gretchen!!"  I looked and looked at the picture of the little girl (whose name is actually Sue -- that's why I want it for Susie) watering the plants with her little watering can and thought it looked to be the most fun chore I could imagine.  Maybe one of these days Random House will reissue this favorite -- We Help Mommy is available, so why not this?  Is it too gender specific to suggest that helping Daddy involves outdoor chores?  Gasp! Heaven forbid. HAHA!

2.  Gyo Fujikawa -- her pictures of children are much more comical and cartoonish than Wilkin's, but classic and endearing in their own way!  Susie got her Mother Goose collection when she was first born (from our friend Barb), and Oh What a Busy Day collection for her first birthday (from Aunt Emily).  I believe these are both reprints of books from the 1950's (or perhaps a bit later), but they are beautifully done.  Her Babies book was an early favorite of Susie's, and the first book Fujikawa both wrote and illustrated.  She was ahead of her time illustrating books with muti-racial babies and children in the 1950's, which is one reason why her illustrations still look so fresh and new.  I did not grow up with these books (that I recall), but when you look at her pictures, you feel like a child again!  I could sit and page through the collections over and over exploring the expressions of the children in them.

It may take me quite a bit longer to collect everything Gyo Fujikawa has done, since I've just begun, but I'm up to the task!  I think I might try to get this one next:  A to Z Picture Book.  It looks like another one I could page through for hours.


Who are your favorite children's book illustrators?  Can you even narrow it down to one or two?  I'm linking up to Feed Me Books Friday at The Adventure of Motherhood, so check out other great book recommendations there!

The Eaglet

Today I'd like to recommend a little book called The Eaglet by Jim Elliff which is a simple yet powerful story of the gospel. I was reminded of how much I loved this book this week during VBS, when the younger classes read it in their lesson time on the night they learned about Salvation.

A baby eaglet that lives in a nest above a deep gorge is told not to try to fly from the nest, but gives in to the temptation to try to fly and be independent anyway (which is a great analogy for Adam and Eve's sin in the garden). The eaglet is plunging to his death, unable to rescue himself, because his little wings are not nearly powerful enough to save himself. The eaglet cries out for help and the father eagle suddenly swoops down and saves the eaglet. What a beautiful story of salvation! It makes me so thankful for my great God who rescued me when I could not save myself!

My friend Caffy Whitney (wife of Don Whitney, who has written many books on spiritual disciplines) is an excellent artist, and she the artwork for The Eaglet. You can click here to download the entire book, or just the illustrations, if you wanted to use them to "tell" the story yourself. I just love it when you find a good resource for FREE! Of course, if you want to buy this book, you certainly can, it is incredibly inexpensive! Here is the link for ordering information.

I am linking up to Feed Me Books Friday over at Adventures of Motherhood, so check it out for other children's book recommendations!

Susie's Birthday Book

When I read a biography of Elizabeth Prentiss (author and hymn-writer in the 19th century), I was pleasantly surprised to discover that she wrote not only books for adults, but also for children. Even more pleasing, in my mind, was that her first popular children's work was a book called Little Susy's Six Birthdays. Oh! I thought, I'd certainly like to read that!!

Well, good news for me, I found it free online! Now, you won't get the pleasing cloth bound cover, which is precious indeed, but the online version does contain many of the original illustrations. I printed off the online book and spiral bound it to give to MY Susie to keep as a birthday memory book! My thinking was that I would put in pictures from her birthday each year and have her party guests sign their names by the chapter that corresponds with that year's birthday. And then, each year, we can read the chapters leading up to the birthday she is having, and read a NEW chapter ON her birthday.

This book is just so sweet and cute! I was nearly giggling aloud when I read how she portrayed the children -- it really was a delight. Here is the introduction:

TO THE CHILDREN WHO READ THIS BOOK

MY DEAR LITTLE FRIENDS:

This book was written on purpose for you. While I was writing it, I often said to myself, I hope this will please Mally and Willie! I wonder how Sarah and Louisa will like it? Then I thought that I would read what I had written, to a few children, to see what they would say. Because if it failed to interest them, I should be ashamed to have it printed and sent to other children. So I read it to several. Some of them were quite large children, larger than any of you; and other others were small. One of them was nine years old, and one seven, and one six, and one five; and when I saw them smile, as if they were pleased, I was very glad, indeed. And when one of them said she hoped I would print as many as two, one for her and one for her cousin, I felt still more delighted, and thought I would have one for everybody's cousin. A great many little Johnnies and Geordies; many little Nellies and Hatties, will read about Susy's birthdays. Wherein she was good, I hope you will all be like her; and then your birthdays will be happy ones. Sometimes little children don't live to spend six birthdays in this world. They go to heaven and spend them there; and they are better and happier days that any little Susy ever knew. But now I must bid you good-bye. Perhaps I shall write another story for you one of these days.

AUNT SUSAN

I'm so excited to have found this book to use as a special birthday book!! I'm wondering if any of you have birthday book traditions in your family? And in honor of Susie's birthday, don't forget to go here to enter my giveaway of Andrew Case's excellent book of prayers for parents. I'm also linking up to Feed Me Books Friday, so check out more book recommendations there!

Moo, Baa, La La La . . . and book storage for Baby

I chose Moo, Baa, La La La by Sandra Boynton to share for Feed Me Books Friday, because it is a board book that Susie has suddenly decided she loves. A friend gave me this book at a baby shower, saying it was a fave for her kiddos, and I expected Susie to be into it, too. It took her a while to warm up, I must say. I guess the illustrations weren't super appealing for a very young baby (she seemed to be more into the really bright, colorful ones, and things with real pictures). Now she LOVES it! It's the perfect length for her, and it rhymes and is funny. I do the animal sounds nice and loud. I remember Sandra Boynton being a big favorite at Blue Kangaroo Books, a children's bookstore in Illinois (where I had the VERY fun privilege of working!). I see how catchy she is when you are reading her out loud, over and over. I'd really rather read this book 4 times straight than just a book naming the animals on each page (we read those, too). If you aren't already a Sandra Boynton fan, check her out!

Here is a picture of Susie looking at this book outside the other day. I had this stroke of genius to take a cardboard box and throw some "outside stuff" in it for her to explore. I mostly put in board books. We don't have a real yard or any sort of garage or driveway. We live in an apartment, which has a nice sliding door and bit of grassiness for us to explore outside it. I like to take Sus out to get a bit of outdoor time every day, and unless I haul out a blanket, I'm just putting the books right on the ground. Empty box -- PERFECT for keeping stuff off the grass, and adds to the fun for her dumping it out. I love the way she imitates me pointing at the pictures. Stepping stones to reading!

I also came up with a way to store her board books so they are always available to her! I got these CHEAP little baskets with liners and filled them up. Now, in the picture, I've got them all tidy, but the cool thing is that I can just seriously toss the books in and they look fine. And since it was a set of 2, I can put them in different rooms. I was thinking that as she gets older, and I start getting out more of her paper page books, I can rotate them out of the baskets so there are "new" books for her to look at! This has been a big improvement over the bottom shelf I had initially given her. It was just way too confusing to keep the books she CAN have right underneath Daddy's textbooks, which are "no touch". It's pretty funny when she crawls under her jumpy and looks at her books. It's like a little house to read in!

Books My Mother Read

If there ever was a read-aloud queen, it was my mom. She was the poster mother for reading to your children, beginning young, and continuing far past the years when they could read for themselves. Hundreds of golden days were spent with her voice reading stories out loud to her children. I chose a few to share today for Feed Me Books Friday.

The Poky Little Puppy -- who doesn't know this classic? But it is one of the very earliest books I remember. To this day, the sight of a strawberry growing in the grass jars my thoughts to the Poky Puppy's discovery of the strawberry. Last night Susie and I found strawberries growing out our back door, which prompted me to try again with a paper-page book. She was pretty distracted and grabby on the pages, but I tried again while feeding her breakfast this morning. It went GREAT! She was attentive most of the time while I held the book in my left hand, and fed her yogurt with my right. She munched on some Cheerios with her eyes glued to the illustrations. I was so excited to see her progress! This may need to be a morning ritual. Anyway, the Poky Little Puppy is a great mother's day choice, of course, because the Mama dog (who is never pictured in the book), is the moral guiding force. . . that is to say, she teaches her puppies right from wrong -- and they learn their lessons! I remember being EVER so disappointed for Poky Puppy having to go to bed without strawberry shortcake. My mom did a great job emphasizing what a tragedy that was and how Poky Puppy should have just obeyed in the first place!

2. Chicken Soup with Rice -- this is a family fave! Mom must have read this to us a zillion times, because as a toddler, my brother could recite the rhymes "paddle once, paddle twice, paddle chicken soup with rice". If you aren't familiar with this old book, I'll just tell you that it is a book of months, with each month telling you that chicken soup with rice was just the thing to eat! We begged Mom to get this kind of soup at the store (even though I remember not really loving the soup. . . I just wanted it because of the book). Maurice Sendak does the extraordinary illustrations. Here I have January, one side the words, one side the picture. Warning -- this book is addictive! I could read it a million times and recite the rhymes over and over. It's GREAT for preschoolers learning the months of the year, for early readers (because of the repetitive language) and just for fun! Grab a can of Campbells and break out this book for a special lunch time!


3. Poinsettia and Her Family -- written by Felicia Bond, of "If you give a Mouse/Moose/Pig" fame, this out of print book is a gold mine of ADORABLE pictures. I can only say I am too sad Amazon doesn't have the cover image available. I gave this book to my mom for Christmas about 4 years ago, because I'd found a used copy and I knew she's be thrilled. We used to get the Poinsettia books from the library as kids, and Mom could relate to poor Poinsettia who was just looking for a quiet place to read her book, but her house was full of siblings lying around "like seals". I've been searching for a link to show you some illustrations from the book, but you'll just have to take me on blind faith. Look for this oldie-but-goodie at the library!!

Bizzy Gets a New Book

Wednesday night I found myself with a rare blessing -- a suddenly free evening with access to the car. So after dinner, I grabbed Biz (one of many nicknames for my daughter), my baby sling and the bag of magazines and books I was planning to trade in, and headed to Half Priced Books. I'm still thrilled that I actually live in the same city as this store. What a treat! I decided to drop off my bag at the buy counter and take Susie to explore the kid's section. I figured if I found a board book we couldn't live without, it would probably end up being free.


Of course we did! My eyes lit up when I saw the spine on Baby! Baby! by Vicky Ceelen. I wanted to get Susie a book of baby faces, since she loves flipping through the Pottery Barn Kids catalog with me, and is mesmerized by the show "Bringing Home Baby" when it's on in the morning. I was not disappointed! This big square book has large pictures of animals and babies on each page, mirroring each other in facial expression or position. The cover is a terrible example (I'm sorry, I don't think that baby looks like that ugly dog!), so here is a picture I took of Susie's favorite page. She just loves the baby sticking out its tongue; she's sort of all about tongues right now. I knew this book was a keeper when Susie was laughing by the last page. Good news! It cost a dollar less than what I made off my trade-ins, so even the tax was covered!


I chose this book for Feed Me Books Friday because it is JUST the sort of book we can enjoy together! I love making up words for wordless books, or just talking about the pictures. Susie loves the babies so much that this morning when I pulled the book back out, she was kissing them over and over. I'd say this book is a win-win-win. Post here if you've had some amazing second-hand book finds! I love to buy used books, and I ADORE discovering something special like this. It was not Walmart, with a dozen of the same books, but almost no selection. There was only one copy and that one was there just for us.


Sorry, I didn't do the books you can sing theme! Head over to The Adventure of Motherhood for more book suggestions! If you're like me, and reading to a baby, please read my post from yesterday on reading to babies and contribute to the conversation!

To the tiger at the zoo, Susie-Q just said "Pooh pooh"

This week, Susie and I had our first outing to the Louisville Zoo together. I love to connect reading a book with a new adventure, so for my first "Feed Me Books Friday" post I decided to write about Curious George and First Words at the Zoo. I read this little board book (click the link to see why I'm board book only at this age) to Sus several times before we left for the zoo in the morning, and we've been reading it a few times since. At 10 months, she doesn't necessarily get the connection, but it won't be too long before she will! At any rate, it's a great vocabulary builder; my husband was reading this to her the next day and she started saying "Dorge, Dorge"!

One thing I really like about Curious George and First Words at the Zoo, is that there is no story, just pictures labeled with words or phrases. Perfect opportunity for mom or dad to be the storyteller! I love to make the story up differently as we turn the sturdy colorful pages:

"OH NO!!! Curious George took the zoo keeper's keys! He's gonna let out the animals!!!"

I hope I'm teaching my child to be expressive and love words. Books are so much a part of who I am, and I find myself quoting bits of children's books when the opportunity presents itself. Here are a couple quotes (that I remember) from our zoo trip:

"Look Susie!! Look at the Elephants! There's a Mama bear elephant, Papa bear elephant and Baby bear elephant all holding each other's tails!". . . then realized I was mixing my animal terms because I was referring to Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Clearly, in my mind, "mama bear, papa bear and baby bear" are universal terms to be applied to any creatures that appear in that order.

"Look at the tiger, Sus! Look at his big teethy!!! Is he scary? No. . . 'to the tiger at the zoo, Susie-Q just said "pooh pooh"'!" quoting from Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans.

What books have slipped into your vocabulary? Do you find yourself speaking "book talk" to your kids?

Check out the other recommendations at Silly Eagle Books!