Kids' Book Roundup

Something a little different this time!

I’ve gotten some requests to recommend things to watch, read, and eat with your kids. So you know what? I think it’s time for a kids’ book roundup.

Most of you don’t know this, but my children’s book cred runs deeper than parenthood. My bat mitzvah theme was “Ali’s Anthology,” and each table featured one of my favorite classics. Yes, I was that nerdy. In case you’re wondering, I sat at Eloise.

Unsurprisingly, our girls are big readers. Esme tore through the world of Hogwarts last year. Since then, she’s vacillated between “books about orphans, I really like books about orphans,” graphic novels, and wanting us to read to her (Jon got her hooked on the Redwall series, and I took her down the rabbit hole of D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths).

Sylvie, midway through kindergarten, is at that glorious stage where the letters are starting to find their place in the choreography of words and sentences. She still loves being read to, but we’re pushing her to read to us more – mostly because there are few greater joys than watching her figure out that dance.

Please weigh in down below in the comments — and let me know if you’d like kid-oriented picks more often!

---

From the littlest littles on up to Esme, here are some of our favorites, and some of what we’re reading right now:

Favorite Book for When the World Is Too Scary

ALL THE WORLD

Liz Garton Scanlon and Marla Frazee
Age Range: Birth-6

All the World is like a weighted blanket in picture book form. I wish this masterpiece had been around when I was a kid, though I’m grateful it’s been a part of my girls’ lives from the beginning. With their lyrical rhyming couplets and warm illustrations, Liz Garton Scanlon and Marla Frazee (better known for Boss Baby) take you through a summer day in the life of a multicultural family living in a small, diverse community on the California coast.

The book’s overarching theme – that each of our lives, each moment, each connection matters, and that together our collective experiences are what makes the world go round – manages to soothe me when I’m anxious about the world we’ve brought these children into. I know it soothes my kids’ (smaller) worries, too.

Favorite Line: It’s excruciating to choose just one here, but I’m going to have to go with “Slip, trip, stumble, fall. Tip the bucket, spill it all. Better luck another day. All the world goes round this way.”

Best Title to Sing to the Tune of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”

MOO, BA, LA LA LA!

Sandra Boynton
Age Range: Birth-3

Moo, Ba, La La La! was the first of many books by Sandra Boynton that we’ve come to own and love (other faves include Belly Button Book! and Hippos Go Berserk!). It’s easy to conjure memories of reading it while I rocked baby Esme to sleep, when we still lived in Brooklyn, where a traffic light shone through her bedroom window and buses idled below. I could recite it by heart right now, if you asked, its amusing rhymes running through a variety of animal sounds (it’s three dancing pigs, by the way, who sing “La, la, la!”).

But my favorite part is at the end, where Boynton leaves space for the audience to weigh in. Esme used to answer the question with, “I wuv you,” which may be the real reason why it got so much play around here.

Favorite Line: “It’s quiet now. What do you say?”

Favorite Book to Gift New Parents

HUGGY, KISSY

Leslie Patricelli
Age Range: Birth-4

Leslie Patricelli is another master of the rhyming board book that won’t drive you batty. In fact, it’s now stuck in my head and it still makes me smile. This one’s a no-brainer to give to any new parent. (We usually gift it along with All the World, balancing humor with depth.) As your kid gets a bit older, it’s a great opportunity to sneak in lots of hugs and kisses before bedtime. While it’s definitely meant for little ones, Sylvie asks for it from time to time, and it still makes her – and us – laugh out loud.

Favorite Line: Please don’t make me pick between “I hug my blankie. I kiss my fishy. Uncle is scratchy. Auntie is squishy,” and “Mommy kisses all my toesies. Daddy kisses on my tummy. They both want to eat me up. I’m so yummy, yummy!”

Best “Feelings Book”

OUT OF A JAR

Deborah Marcero
Age Range: 3-7

I picked this one up at my wonderful local pop-up bookstore, Picture Book, because I was drawn to the cover right away. We haven’t read Marcero’s previous bestseller, In a Jar, at home, though Sylvie’s enjoyed it at school, but this one proved to be the kind of book you can read over and over again at bedtime without wanting to hide it behind the couch or give it away on Buy Nothing.

It’s short. The illustrations are gorgeous. Most importantly, it’s the story of a young bunny named Llewellyn who keeps his feelings bottled up, and how he learns to be brave enough to feel his feelings instead. It sounds a bit on the nose when I describe it here, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with its message. After the first time we read it, Sylvie asked me, “Is that a feelings book?” Yes, Sylvie, yes it is.

Favorite Line: “Once those feelings were out, something happened that Llewellyn didn’t expect. He was happy and sad at the same time. He was excited and worried. But most of all, he felt relieved.”

Best Biography of an Icon

NINA: A STORY OF NINA SIMONE

Traci N. Todd and Christian Robinson
Age Range: 4-8

This beautifully written and illustrated book is one of the better picture-book biographies I’ve read – and who deserves that more than the inimitable Nina Simone? Nina takes you on a journey through little Eunice’s childhood as a musical prodigy in small-town North Carolina and the discrimination she faced when trying to become a classical pianist, her transformation into Nina Simone when she started playing again in Atlantic City clubs, and her political awakening as the Civil Rights Movement swelled. The best part? Your kids may even be willing to pause the Encanto soundtrack for a few minutes to listen to some of her transformational, earth-shaking music.

Favorite Line: “Nina’s voice broke with the weight of this new music. It was harder now, rough, defiant. Black people loved her for it. They had always loved her. But now, as they sat at lunch counters, demanding to be served; rode buses, demanding to be seated; and marched, demanding good jobs for good pay – they knew how much she truly loved them.”

Best Book for Picky Eaters and Budding Foodies Alike

BIG DREAMS, SMALL FISH

Paula Cohen
Age Range: 4-8

As the mom of one picky eater – and a former picky eater myself – I love a book that shows people trying new foods, especially when they like them! Gefilte fish can seem strange or off-putting to those who’ve never tried it. (Though it was actually one of the few foods that passed my lips as a kid, and certainly the only kind of fish besides fish sticks!)

But Cohen’s protagonist Shirley, inspired by her own mother, has an idea to help it sell at her parents’ corner grocery store. Shirley is full of ingenuity, pluck, and just a smidge of mischief, and she manages to unite a diverse neighborhood through their newfound love for a food that everyone had always spurned.

Favorite Moment: When the neighbors find their “surprise” and tuck into Mama’s gefilte fish for the first time. Cohen’s illustration here, depicting all the neighbors trying the specialty through their row-house windows, is pure joy.

Best Book about an Artist’s Origin Story

LOUIE!

Will Hillenbrand
Age Range: 4-8
NB: This one’s out of print, so you’ll probably have the most luck at your local library.

Sylvie wants to be an artist when she grows up, “and also an art teacher,” which means she has a far better sense, at five, of how to build a sustainable creative career than I do. Given her dreams, it’s no surprise she brought this book home from the school library last month. Louie! (loosely) tells the story of Ludwig Bemelmans and how he went from misfit student to the author-illustrator of Madeline and other classics. In this sweet book, however, Louie is a little pig who lives in Paris. Sylvie loved this one, plus it made me realize that, while we’d read Madeline about a thousand times with Esme, somehow Syl had never read it – so we pulled that off the shelf and read it for a week straight.

Favorite Moment: When Louie is sent off to work at his aunt and uncle’s hotel, and they discover all the drawings in his room and encourage him to pursue his art. It’s also fun to try and spot all the Madeline easter eggs.

Best Graphic Memoir

BAD SISTER

Charise Mericle Harper and Rory Lucey
Age Range: 8-12

My mom got this one for Esme before a recent vacation, and I ended up reading most of it alongside her, which isn’t usually Esme’s graphic novel MO. But I’m glad I did. Bad Sister’s exploration of sibling – and parent-child – dynamics is pretty universal. As a big sister myself, I really connected with Charise and her journey from resenting her younger brother to reckoning with their relationship. And I always appreciate a great graphic memoir. (If you’re looking for one to read yourself, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is the best there is. They even made it into a Broadway musical, and the soundtrack is fantastic.)

Esme’s Favorite Moment: “When Charise’s brother falls off his bike going down a big hill and gets all bloody. They ring a doorbell nearby, and there’s this old lady who says he can’t come in because she doesn’t want blood to get on her carpet, but she agrees to let her call their parents from her phone. Charise expects her mom to come and not to get in trouble, but her dad comes instead and is super mad. When they get home, Charise says that she saved him – and, this part is like The Boy Who Cried Wolf – but her parents say they’ve heard that before and don’t believe her.”

Best Graphic Novel for Your Dragon-Obsessed Kid

THE AWAKENING STORM (CITY OF DRAGONS #1)

Jaimal Yogis and Vivian Truong
Age Range: 8-12

If your 3rd-6th grader is anything like mine, it’s a fair bet they’re into a certain dragon series that I always mistakenly call Wings of Desire, to Esme’s embarrassed groans. While they say that all that matters is that your kid is reading, not what they’re reading, I was happy to chance upon this book, which (I’ll say it) feels a lot less trashy. Grace, the protagonist, is a contemporary tween Daenerys Targaryen, minus the bloodthirsty desire to reconquer Westeros. Instead, she’s focused on making friends at the boarding school her mom and new stepdad sent her to when they moved to Hong Kong. There’s some of that same mother-of-dragons magic, though, and Esme tore through this in one (very late) night.

Esme’s Favorite Moment: “I don’t have a favorite moment. I like all of it. But if I had to choose, I would say it’s when they realize that their baby dragon, whose name is Nate (after Grace’s father who died), was captured by Grace’s new stepdad who works for a company that wants to test its blood. Grace then figures out that they were also doing tests on her father, which is what killed him. Then her stepdad turns into one of these old villains and begs Grace to forgive him, but she won’t. Then the building explodes, but they all survive.”

---

Comment away!

I’d love to hear what you think about these selections — and about dipping into the world of kids’ lit, movies, etc, more often.