Our favorite kids books

When we first started reading to our daughter I realized we had no idea what the ‘good’ books were. I asked some friends what their favorite books were, which was useful for a handful of books, but we quickly realized that:

You get bored reading the same book over and over
There are a lot of bad children’s books

At my local library you can borrow up to 80 items at a time, and books auto-renew up to some amount of times. So we generally will go and borrow about 40 books in a go. This looks somewhat ridiculous but we are not picky about them and will usually quickly scan a book and put it in the pile if it seems decent. This often leads to some great surprises.

Classics

The Lorax: I am a bit put off by the agenda here, which is a kind of anti-capitalist pro-environment thing, but the story is really well told and illustrated. My daughter also loves the Once-ler.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!: My Daughter loved this so much that she memorized the entire book when she was almost 3. I had no idea she was doing this, and when she recited a huge chunk of it for the first time I cried from astonishment.
One Morning in Maine: Feels like it harkens back to an earlier era, almost meditative. Beautifully illustrated.
Frog And Toad Are Friends: I don’t think I ever read this as a kid and I absolutely love this. It is like two perfectly articulated personality archetypes that are so common to find in life. It doesn’t feel like it’s forcing some lesson on you. It’s just two very different friends hanging out.
Aesops Fables: There’s a version of this with really incredible illustrations on Amazon. It is over my kid’s head and some of the lessons are from another time, but she loves it.
The Night Kitchen: Feels like reading a dream, which I suppose it is.
Outside Over There: Truly bizarre. We’ve had friends read this to mess with them and they almost to a person find it extremely off-putting, which my daughter thinks is hilarious.
Where The Wild Things Are: A classic, fun to do voices for.
Polar Express: There’s a reason this is a classic. About Santa and the experience of belief. Very good.
Everyone Poops: Great when doing potty training. Really simple, and literally shows animals and humans pooping. Pretty funny.
What Do People Do All Day: This is almost like a celebration of capitalism and work. Maybe one of the rarest things to find in children’s books.
Goodnight Moon: Basically a poem. I didn’t love this and thought it was a bit boring at first. Now that I’ve read it upwards of a hundred times, I really appreciate its simple, quiet beauty.
Strega Nona: Kind of an insane story about a witch who can make pasta and her little helper.
The Story of Ferdinand: About a gentle bull in Spain. We lived in Granada for a couple years and this book is so beautifully illustrated that I feel transported back.
Eloise: Kind of like ‘Uncut Gems’ but for kids. Like an ADHD run-on sentence in book form. Pretty fun classic.
The Cat At Night: I love how it explores the world of a cat through the use of color and darkness in the pages.

Modern Stuff

Olivia: Really great. Basically just about a piglet named Olivia, which seems modeled on the author’s daughter.
I Want My Hat Back: Great for voices. Unexpectedly violent in a quiet way that I am a bit surprised a modern author got over the line. Same author does a great rendition of the Billy Goats Gruff.
The Fate of Fausto: I was pretty struck by how beautifully illustrated and paced this story is. The ending is also surprisingly violent for a modern author.
Hungry Jim: About a boy who wakes up as a Lion and eats the whole town. An overt homage to Maurice Sendak.
Bug Girl: About a girl who gets bullied for liking bugs. This book single-handedly resolved all my daughter’s fears about bugs and made it so she excitedly picks up dead bees and other bugs.
Grumpy Monkey: Really great faces/illustration, the page where he gets really sad is so exquisitely done that his expression is seared into my memory. Story is great. Deserves the praise it gets.
A Mouthful of Minnows: About a snapping turtle who realizes he’s going to wipe out the entire bloodline of the food he wants to eat and gets second thoughts. Really funny.
The Princess and the Pony: By Kate Beaton, who wrote ‘Hark a Vagrant’, one of my top web comics of all time. A simple, fun book.
The Story Orchestra: The story here is pretty secondary, to be honest. It’s basically about Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, it allows kids to play the music in a narrative context. Made me appreciate Vivaldi more.
Rosie Revere, Engineer: I have somewhat mixed feelings about this one. It is just so clearly agenda-driven that it’s a little obnoxious. The whole series is like this. But it is nicely illustrated and the rhythm of the story is fun.
The Last Peach: Really fun to do voices for. Effectively a couple bugs talking about eating peach for a whole book.
Little Blue Truck: Solid rhyming. I do my most stereotypical southerner voice for this and it is pretty fun to read.
The Gruffalo: Illustration is kind of mediocre, but the pacing and silliness make it pretty solid.
Stop Feeding’ Da Boids!: This lady in NYC just can’t stop feeding the pigeons. Fun to do voices.
Stuck: About a kid who keeps throwing more and more ludicrous things into a tree to free up his kite.
This Moose Belongs to Me: Another one from Oliver Jeffers. About a kid who claims a moose as his own. Beautiful illustration and pacing.
Chikka Chikka Boom Boom: Very silly alphabet book. I do it in a crazy voice and it just flows in a really fun way.
Quiet! by Céline Claire: Has almost no reviews online, which feels crazy to me. One of our favorites, about a cranky guy who is pissed about the noise of living in the city (I believe Paris is the setting of the story). Very fun just shouting QUIET! while reading.
In a Jar: Very beautifully illustrated. A nice warm hug of a book about bottling up experiences.

Will probably make you uncontrollably cry:

The Phone Booth in Mr. Hirota’s Garden: Effectively unknown, we picked this up randomly off the shelf. It’s about the 2011 tsunami in Japan. I was destroyed by this.
Grandpa’s Top Threes: Criminally ignored, there are just 3 reviews about it on Amazon. I dunno how to explain this without ruining it. Very good.
Love You Forever: This has become a well-known classic about a mother’s love for her son. It will rug pull you and you will cry in front of your children. My daughter loved us reading it because she found us crying at it to be fascinating.