SteelyKid and I are currently on our second pass through the Winnie-the-Pooh book my parents got her (which is identical to the one I had as a kid). We read one story every time she goes to bed, so that’s one every night, and one at weekend nap times. She only sort of pays attention to the details of the stories, but she likes pointing to the occasional pictures, and waving her stuffed Pooh and Piglet around.
I wouldn’t mind some more variety, though I’m not entirely sure what the options are for read-aloud books at the appropriate level (she’s two-and-a-quarter). But that’s what the Internet is for, right? So,
What are some good story books that ought to go into the rotation with Winnie-the-Pooh in the read-aloud-at-bedtime collection?
Got a favorite read-aloud book that SteelyKid might like? Leave a suggestion in the comments.
(Furr’s Law suggests that I could get better, faster feedback by stating that I plan to start reading her selected papers from Physical Review Letters, or something like that, but we’ll try the direct request first…)
Some of my favorites when I was young (although some may be too high level for her right now) were:
Frog and Toad
Little Bear
anything by Beatrix Potter
Curious George
Madeline
anything by Tomi de Paola (Strega Nona is one of my favorites)
Amelia Bedelia
Do Baby Bears Sit In Chairs?
There’s a Monster at the End of This Book
Katie’s Kitten
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Frog & Toad, Curious George, Little Bear, Madeline, Strega Nona, and Amelia Bedelia all have multiple books. There was a also a book series about a badger called Frances that I really liked.
I also recently found a book called “Llama, llama, red pajama” that was a big hit with the daughter of a friend of mine when she was 3-ish.
Ha. When I saw the title of the post my first thought was Winnie the Pooh. If you haven’t read it already, The House at Pooh Corner should also be read (it’s the other book of Pooh stories). I second everything that Kate listed, and along with Mike Mulligan should go all of Virginia Burton’s other books (Katie and the Big Snow, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Grey Bridge, and so on). Beatrix Potter for sure, and there’s enough there to keep you busy for months. I loved the Frances books that Kate mentioned. They’re by Russell Hoban.
Anything Eric Carle is a good bet, as is anything by Leo Leoni (my favorite was Swimmy). Richard Scarry was also a huge hit in my house.
In the late 1800s, a guy named Andrew Lang compiled the most fantastic collection of fairy tales from around the world that has ever been done. Now, because his copyright has expired, the entire collection is online, though it’s still being printed and carried at some stores, if you prefer the dead tree version. The stories are as fantastic as you ever hoped they might be.
http://www.mythfolklore.net/andrewlang/
Don’t neglect the poetry of AA Milne while you’re stocking up on Poohbear. But some are a bit better for older.
Mike Mulligan is particularly wonderful- you seemed to mention Steelykid had some kind of fascination with things that go. My little guy is also enjoying one called Little Blue Truck (it’s actually a bit long for a 14 month old attention span, might be better for Steelykid). I also fondly remember my copy of the Little Engine that Could with its own wheels.
Goodnight Moon is very popular, although I always preferred Eric Carl’s “Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me”. Everything illustrated by Eric Carl was a hit, but the classics (The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You Here) are best.
My best friend, whose mom is a librarian, got me hooked on “Taily Po”.
Any number of Suessian options are fun- Hop On Pop may be about right.
And there’s also Babar, there are several of those.
I’m always forgetting books; this is one of the few places I find the “Customers who bought this item also bought” feature on Amazon.com comes in very handy.
I’ll second most of the suggestions from Kate and Abby, especially the Virginia Burton books. Also, I’m a bit surprised that no one has yet suggested any of the Robert McCloskey books, including Make Way for Ducklings, Blueberries for Sal, and One Morning in Maine.
When my daughter was that age I used to read her Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense to get her off to sleep. Some of the Lewis Carrol poems (The Walrus and the Carpenter, You are Old Father William, and so on) and Dr Seuss were also very good for this. As she got older I found that, if I wasn’t to fall asleep first, I had to deliberately search out books that would keep my interest as well as hers. I wrote about this h few years back here.
You must get your hands on one, or all, of the Skippyjon Jones books immediately. Not least because you’ll get to say “Holy guacamole!” a lot. (They’re by Judy Schachner, who is obviously a genius).
The Olivia books (by Ian Falconer) have been very popular with my niece (2 1/2) and nephew (5). And, ohmygod, I can go on and on and on: Leo the Late Bloomer (Robert Kraus), Leonardo and the Terrible Monster (and anything else by Mo Willems), Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (William Steig), Llama Llama Red Pajama (Anna Dewdney), anything by Sandra Boynton… if she enjoys interactive board books, anything by Matthew Van Fleet is excellent (Tails is my favorite). Oh! And The Napping House by Audrey Wood! You need that one, too.
There’s a comment thread here that looks like one of the most comprehensive set of recommendations for kids’ books you could possibly come up with.
Here’s a few selected classics…
The Velveteen Rabbit
The Madeline books
Where the Wild Things Are
Alexander and the Terrible Horrible Very Bad Day
“Greek Myths for Young Children” (Usborne)
Berenstein Bears
The Arthur books
Paddington Bear
Amelia Bedelia
Babar stories
The Tashi series
the Magic School Bus books
Shel Silverstein
Dr. Seuss
Katy and the Big Snow, Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel, Katy No Pockets, the various Frog and Toad Books, the various Frances Books (like Bread and Jam for Frances), Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day, and Amelia Bedelia were favorites of mine and my younger sister.
Besides being good books Katy and the Big Snow and Katy No Pockets were favorites of mine probably partly because I was a Katy in a land of Jennifers and Jessicas. Books with SteelyKid’s real name them will likely be popular.
If SteelyKid goes on a princess kick when she gets a bit older, I recommend The Paper Bag Princess for counter programming. The Princess saves the Prince from a dragon. The when he points out she is a mess after saving him, the Princess tells him off.
I just read the other responses and realized that Abby, Kate and I apparently shared the same childhood. I second the books they mentioned that I forgot.
A few good picture books (so slightly off topic)
“Each Peach Pear Plum” by the Ahlberg’s (janet and Alan)
The Gruffalo
Stephen Cartwright’s “Find the Duck” books.
Second/third/nth the Frog and Toad and Strega Nona recommendations. Frederick and other Leo Leonni stories have lovely illustrations, as does Ezra Jack Keats’ Snowy Day. If Steelykid likes hunting through illustrations, she’ll probably enjoy looking for the hedgehog in Jan Brett’s gorgeous illustrations, and the stories are a lot of fun too. There’s always Eloise, and really anything illustrated by Hilary Knight is fun – when Steelykid is a bit older you might try the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series.
If you like Jan Brett, you could also try hunting down some Tasha Tudor books. If you’re looking for longer stories, you might try the Freddy the Pig stories or the Dr. Doolittle books, with the caveat that both are definitely products of the time in which they were written. Oh, and Kipling’s Just-So stories have the same problem, but the language is so lovely for reading aloud: “The great gray-green greasy Limpopo river”. The Paddington Bear books are also good for reading aloud, as are the Mary Poppins stories, though both might be better when she’s a bit older.
Quentin Blake is another one of the illustrators I love. I recently discovered Joan Aiken’s Arabel and Mortimer series, which I think is aimed about at the same level as Winnie the Pooh. Henry’s Awful Mistake, by Robert Quackenbush, is apparently first in a series, though I just remember rereading the first one as a child. Danny and the Dinosaur and Sammy the Seal, both by Syd Hoff, are two more fun ones. This is already too long, so I’ll just close by recommending that you consider a copy of the Golden Books Family Treasury of Poetry, which has poems that will be appropriate now and ones that will be appropriate in 10 years, as well as some lovely illustrations. If the poetry goes over well, you can look for illustrated collections by Ogden Nash, Edward Lear, or Robert Louis Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses. There’s a lovely version of the last illustrated by Tasha Tudor, to wrap things up.
So many good books out there!
My favorites include:
-anything by Robert McCloskey, but especially Time of Wonder. It’s more lyrical and even more beautiful, but for some reason is less widely available than his other books.
-anything by Barbara Cooney, especially Miss Rumphius, Island Boy, and Roxaboxen
-The Olivia series by Ian Falconer
-The Night Kitchen
Can’t resist one more: It’s out of print, but if you can find a copy of The Hungry Thing, by Jan Slepian and Ann Seidler, I highly recommend it.
Our Winnie-the-Pooh book is the World of Pooh, which is both Winnie the Pooh and the House at Pooh Corner. We’re halfway through the latter in our second pass through the book. I need to be careful about it, though– the last few pages of the last story seemed to give off some sort of fumes that made my eyes water. Have to watch out for that.
One of the selling points of the Pooh books, at least from my point of view, is that they’re not lavishly illustrated. We have a lot of illustrated books (Jan Brett, Dr. Seuss, etc.), but they tend not to work that well as bedtime reading, because she spends a lot of time sitting up to point at the pictures. The handful of color plates in the Pooh book are a huge time sink for that reason– she starts in on them a page or two before I get there, and keeps flipping the page up to say “I see Tigger!” or whatever.
I got her to start on the Pooh books by telling her it was a big-girl book, and she needed to lie quietly and listen. That doesn’t entirely work, but I can usually get her to stop kicking the wall or trying to stand on her head by ostentatiously closing the book. At which point she stops, lies down, and says “I listening.” Something with the same level of illustration would be good. If it’s a hair too old for her, that’s probably ok.
I’m half tempted to start The Hobbit (the first lines of which are a running joke when we read Goodnight Moon every night– I’ll open it up, and start with “In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit…” or “The sky over the port was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel…” or “Four score and seven years ago…” and she’ll say “No, Daddy! Goodnight Moon!”), but I think that’s still a little too old. I should probably re-read it to check, but I’ve got a huge stack of review copies I ought to be reading instead.
Alexander and the Magic Mouse was one of my favorite books when I was five, but the pictures might be a bit freaky for her. She could try to find the mouse on the pages! There’s also The Little House, Three Little Animals. You’ll have to buy the mouse book and the Three Little Animals books through third party sellers on Amazon, or maybe alibri.com, but The Little House is even available in board book form, which I found out by checking Amazon. When my nephew was little (20+ years ago) he had the Mike Mulligan book and some Sesame Street books, so those might be a good idea. I have no idea what’s out there now. Check out the kid sections at Borders or B&N if all else fails. Take her with and see what catches her attention.
When we tired of the Pooh books, we turned to E.B. White, and read chapters of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little. Yeah, it was a little old for her, but we had some sparsely illustrated versions, and the main point was something with a lot of words so that we could get into that lulling into sleep mode.
No one has mentioned, “The Little Engine That Could?” Amazing. When she gets a little older, I’d highly recommend, she read, “Stellaluna.” It works great with teacher/parental input.
When my grandkids were that age, they loved the Dr. Seuss books; the rhyming nonsense ones, like Hop on Pop, or One Fish, Two Fish.
“Red is Best” by Kathy Stinson
“The Monster at the End of This Book” by Jon Stone (it’s got Grover!)
“Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak
“The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein
“Stellaluna” by Janell Cannon
“If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” by Laura Joffe Numeroff (expect it to be quoted CONSTANTLY, though)
“The True Story of the Three Little Pigs” by Jon Scieszka (it’s told from the wolf’s perspective and is hilarious even as an adult)
“The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales”, also by Jon Sciezka
“The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig” by Eugene Trivizas (okay, so I was a kid who really liked stories told from other perspectives — but it’s fun!)
“Yertle the Turtle” by Doctor Seuss
“The Secret World of Og” by Pierre and Patsy Berton
“The Tale of Peter Rabbit” by Beatrix Potter (we had the whole box set and read them completely to death)
As she gets older, I’d suggest “Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh” by Robert O’Brien, “The Hobbit” (obviously), and “The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norman Juster. I don’t like to assume that kids are “too young” for things, but those ones are probably just a bit too far over her head just yet. Then again, I was reading “The Hobbit” to my best friend’s kids when the youngest was only five, and he loved every minute of it, so it won’t be TOO long before she’s ready.
If I remember correctly, SteelyKid is into vehicles. If you haven’t started her on Thomas the Tank Engine stuff yet, there’s a big book of stories that might work for you. It’s more like the Winnie-the-Pooh books than an illustrated story.
Oh, and the Skippyjon Jones books are great, but not really the “let’s settle down for bed” type of book.
Oh, I forgot my favourite collections of kids’ poems: “There’s an Awful Lot of Weirdos in Our Neighborhood” by Colin McNaughton, “Alligator Pie” by Dennis Lee, and Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends”. All of them are memorable and totally quotable, so you’ll hear them a LOT, but they’re fun and great for teaching new words.
Lentil, by Robert McCloskey
Oh, Say, Can You Say? by Dr. Seuss (a lovely change from Fox in Sos, which is more widely known)
A Child’s Garden of Verse, by Robert Louis Stevenson
When We Were Very Young, and Now We Are Six, by A. A. Milne (I quote these poems to this day)
My sister is a children’s librarian. All librarians rock, but children’s librarians really rock. You should visit your local library and ask the children’s librarian for suggestions. They also might have story time. Not a bedtime thing, of course, but it’s nice to spend time with LOTS of books and people who love books.
For poetry, Ogden Nash and Jack Prelutsky were also hits at our house.
Kipling’s Just So stories make marvelous read-alouds. Some have sexism/race issues, so you might want to preread them, but one of the the joys of parenting is reading O My Best Beloved and really meaning it.
LeGuin’s Catwing books might be another good selection, with stories she can connect with.
Beverly Cleary writes good chapter books, with each chapter standing alone but the story having an arc. Beezus and Ramona starts with Ramona in preschool.
We liked the Thomas The Tank Engine stories as well; we had the giant book. Not the paperbacks based on the TV series, but the stories the TV stuff was based on.
I know this isn’t what you asked, but I have three suggestions: go to your public library and look in the picture book section. Check out any 10 that appeal to you. Try them out on her. Go back and do it again. And again. And again. The second is to find Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud handbook. He has a lot of good titles. And third: ask your local children’s librarian for suggestions.
Most of these suggestions are good, but I just wanted to say: Not Amelia Bedelia. Please. No. They might be OK for the kid, but the constant repetition of “Amelia Bedelia” every couple of seconds will eventually make your brain dribble out of your ears. Those things are torture to read to a kid.
It sounds like Frog and Toad (and, indeed, most of the books by Lobel) would suit your needs fine – some but not too many pictures, and a reasonable amount of text that isn’t so insufferably twee that it will make your brains run out of your ears.
It occurs to me that I’ve never tried, say, the collection of 50 short-short science fiction stories edited by Conklin, or any of the several collections of 100 short-short science fiction stories edited by Greenberg and [big name]. Some of those might actually be pretty good for little kids, I should try a few of them on my daughters sometime.
Ooh, ooh! “Go, Dog. Go!” by P.D. Eastman:
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“Do you like my hat?
“No, I do not like that hat!”
“Good bye.”
“Good BYE!”
The “My naughty little sister” stories by Dorothy Edwards
Also, I second the Andrew Lang fairy tale books, although they might be a little too old for her right now. And they’re not picture books. The other place to look in the library is in the fairy tale section – there are lots of picture book fairy tales.
Ooh, reading the rest of the suggestions I realize that no on has mentioned The Wind in the Willows. Also maybe a bit old for her, but it’s another set of talking animal stories that are light on the pictures if you’re looking for bedtime reading (but at least our copy has some pictures).
If she likes Goodnight Moon, try Runaway Bunny, Little Fur Family, or others of Margaret Wise Brown’s.
I loved “Professor Wormbog in Search for the Zipperump-a-Zoo” like nothing else back when I was a wee lad. It looks like it’s out of print right now, but as far as I can tell they’re going to do a new run within the next few months.
Almost forgot — not this year, but probably next, when SteelyKid is starting to understand and appreciate word games, you’ll need to find a copy of Tajar Tales by Julia Shaw Ward. A few line drawings and some delightful text — definitely better read aloud than read by oneself. The Tajar is “something like a tiger, something like a jaguar, and something like a badger.” He loves to dance in the moonlight, but must not be seen by the campers, because “if you see him once, you would forget what he looked like, but if you should see him twice you would forget to forget what he looked like and that would be quite fatal.”
The Tajar’s favorite activity is doing “death-defying life-leaps” through the branches by his tail.
My son is 3 now and when he was 2 his most favorite book was “My Nursery Rhymes Collection – Hinkler Book Distributors”. There are about 150 Nursery rhymes with beautiful pictures in there. We would read it for months! He also liked Sandra Boynton’s books.
All of my children loved having the Gruffalo, by Julia Donaldson read to them. Might be too many pictures for what you want, however. Also, Room on the broom, by the same author. Her others are ok, but not as good.
Robert McCloskey rules, as others have mentioned.
Start with “Make Way For Ducklings” and “Blueberries For Sal”.
Here are a few fabulous books:
Quack and Count
Catwings (by Ursula LeGuin, sequels – not so fab)
Corduroy
Niccolini’s Song
And Tango Makes Three (banned book, true story of two male penguins bonding, zookeeper gave them an egg to hatch)
I have lots more in a bibliography of kids’ books I compiled. Email me if you’re interested, at mathanthologyeditor on gmail.
I could never get through the end of the “House at Pooh Corner” without my voice cracking. Not even the twentieth time.
Nick looooooved Shel Silverstein when he was 2-3ish. “Ickle Me Pickle Me Tickle Me Too” wasn’t too great for settling down but the opportunity for “surprise” tickles and baby giggles was priceless.
We got tons of mileage out of all kinds of Dr. Seuss. I almost never got tired of reading “Fox in Socks,” weirdly.
“Is Your Mama a Llama?” and “Two Cool Cows” are ones that my kids and I enjoyed, for the rhythm and poetry as well as the artwork.
“Stand Back said the Elephant I’m Going to Sneeze” by Patricia Thomas (illus. by Wallace Tripp)
“The Giant Jam Sandwich” by John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway
“The Lion’s Bed” and “Turtle’s Flying Lesson” by Diane Redfield Massie
Robert Munsch. No question.
Stories made for dramatic parent/teacher reading. Best fave for my daughter was ‘Mud Puddle’; you can really act out the little girl hunting down the Mud Puddle at the end “Oh, Mud Puddle! Mud Puddle?!”
From his site:
Mud Puddle always worked well when I told it except for one time in the High Arctic in a little town called Spence Bay. When I told it there the kids did not laugh. After I finished one kid asked, âWhat is mud?â
Anything by Mo Willems is sublime. I think I like the Elephant and Piggie books best, but the Pigeon or Knuffle Bunny books are probably the best for storytime.
Each Peach Pear Plum by Ahlberg (great rhymes + I Spy)
Where’s My Teddy by Alborough (funny)
Bark, George by Pfeffer (animal sounds + excellent ending)
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Rosen (fun chant/interactive)
It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Shaw (fun with shapes)
Mouse Paint by Walsh (colors)
Big and Little by Stadler (great lift-the-flap book)
David Carter has great pop-up/flap books – I especially like his version of If You’re Happy and You Know It
The Wolf’s Chicken Stew by Kaska
Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Fleming skews a bit older, but has great sound effects
Jan Thomas has amusing interactive books like Can You Make a Scary Face?
Doreen Cronin’s books are funny, though the humor may be over Steelykid’s head at this point.
Ditto for Diary of a Wombat by French and Scaredy Squirrel by Watts
They are older books, and I don’t know if you can find them, but the Mother West Wind stories by Thornton Burgess are great. They are about the adventures of different forest animals in a Peter Rabbit type of way. There’s quite a few of them too, each with large type and short chapters, that make ideal continuing stories for when Mom and Dad can’t stand reading the same thing every day for a fortnight.
Also, for interactive books, try the Richard Scarey stories.
The “Adventures of” stories by Thornton Burgess are the one’s I remember most vividly… I just looked up some of the titles and those jumped out at me.