Books For Itty Bitties

 

Today's Snack: Why not have the ittiest, bittiest snack that packs a lot of taste and nutrition? Sunflower kernels! Enjoy with a small glass of orange juice for a nutrient-rich snack.

 

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As the holidays roll around and the grandparents ask for wish lists, this might be the year to suggest books, books, books. That goes double for young children, who probably already have enough toys. But young people of all ages will always appreciate receiving books, because "a book is a friend."

 

When New Year's Eve rolls around and parents are wondering what's the easiest and best way to help with their children's educations, this also might be the year to make a "Read To Me" resolution. And it would sure help to keep it if there were a lot of new books around the house.

 

There's nothing better for developing vocabulary, comprehension and a love for text - not to mention creating and sustaining an enjoyable parent-child bonding time - than reading aloud to your child every night for 20 or 30 minutes. Go ahead and keep it up in the middle-school years; you'd be surprised how much it can mean to kids.

 

Remember, their reading vocabulary depends on their listening vocabulary, which is always a few years ahead of what they can read and write. The best way to pull them onward and upward is to keep reading to them long past the time they can read to themselves.

 

As long as you're committing that much time, you might as well make sure your kids are getting the best of kiddie lit. Here are some suggestions for the youngest children out there.

 

You can print out this list and share with relatives for gift-giving, and then as the year goes along, you should be able to obtain all of these from the public library. There's always regular bookstores, online bookstores, eBay, garage sales, and any number of other ways to locate quality kiddie lit, too

 

And you should: there's no greater investment in time or money than what goes in to your child's heart and mind.

 

Books with * are for Grades 2 and younger; books with *** are for Grades 6 and up, but these are very flexible, depending on the child.

 

WORDLESS BOOKS

 

* Deep in the Forest, Brinton Turkle

* Good Dog, Carl Alexandra Day

* Noah's Ark, Peter Spier

* The Red Balloon, Albert Lamorisse

* The Snowman, Raymond Briggs

 

REPETITION

 

* Are You My Mother?, P.D. Eastman

* Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, Bill Martin, Jr.

* Chick Chicka Boom Boom, Bill Martin Jr.

* Goodnight, Moon, Margaret Wise Brown

* Henny Penny, Paul Galdone

* If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Laura Numeroff

* The Little House, Virginia Lee Burton

* Millions of Cats, Wanda Gag

* No Jumping on the Bed, Tedd Arnold

* The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle

* We're Going On a Bear Hunt, Michael Rosen

* Where's Spot?, Eric Hill

 

HUMOR

 

* Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Judith Viorst

* Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Judi Barrett

* Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak

Amelia Bedelia series, Peggy Parish

Homer Price series, Robert McCloskey

Many Moons, James Thurber

Mr. Popper's Penguins, Richard and Florence Atwater

Uncle Wiggly, Howard Garis

*** The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Mark Twain

 

ADVENTURE

 

* The Biggest Bear, Lynd Ward

Caddie Woodlawn, Carol Ryrie Brink

The Call of the Wild, Jack London

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMB, Robert C. O'Brien

My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George

Toliver's Secret, Esther Wood Brady

*** The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

*** The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain

*** Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling

*** The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

*** The Lord of the Rings trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien

*** The Sword in the Stone, T.H. White

*** The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas

 

 

MULTICULTURAL

 

* A Chair For My Mother, Vera B. Williams (poverty, single motherhood)

* The Gingerbread Boy, Richard Egielski (urban life)

* The Legend of the Bluebonnet, Tommie DePaola (Native American)

* The Seven Chinese Brothers (Margaret Mahy)

* The Unbreakable Code, Sara Hunter (Native American)

The Arabian Nights, retold by Brian Alderson (Middle East)

The Big Wave, Pearl S. Buck (Asian tsunami)

The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, Virginia Hamilton (African-American)

Fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen (Europe)

Fairy tales, The Brothers Grimm (Europe)

Greek mythology

The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom (Holocaust)

Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling (East Asia)

Maniac Magee, Jerry Spinelli (homelessness)

Norse mythology

Number the Stars, Lois Lowry (Holocaust)

The Pinballs, Betsy Byars (foster children)

Pink and Say, Patricia Polacco (race relations)

The Slave Dancer, Paula Fox (African-American)

Thank You, Jackie Robinson, Barbara Cohen (African-American)

Tikki Tikki Tembo, Arlene Mosel (China)

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Avi (feminism)

Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (African-American)

Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls (rural poverty)

*** Don Quixote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes (Spain)

*** The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison (African-American)

*** And Still I Rise, Maya Angelou (African-American)

*** The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Native American)

*** The Song of Roland (French folklore)

 

FOLKLORE

 

East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Fifty-Nine Norwegian Folk-Tales, Peter Asbjrsen

From Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasury of American Folklore and Folk Songs, Amy Cohen

Rip Van Winkle, Washington Irving

Robin Hood, Eva March Tappan

The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Robert Browning

Uncle Remus, Joel Chandler Harris

 

 

CLASSICS

 

* Bluebeard, Charles Perrault

* Blueberries For Sal, Robert McCloskey

* Cinderella, Charles Perrault

* The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter

* Corduroy, Don Freeman

* Curious George, H.A. Rey

* The Emperor's News Clothes, Hans Christian Andersen

* Jack and the Beanstalk, retold by John Howe

* Little Red Riding Hood, Charles Perrault

* Make Way for Ducklings, Robert McCloskey

* Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Virginia Lee Burton

* The Nightingale, Hans Christian Andersen

* Puss in Boots, Charles Perrault

* Sleeping Beauty, Charles Perrault

* The Little Engine That Could, Watty Piper

* The Ugly Duckling, Hans Christian Andersen

* The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams

* The World of Christopher Robin, A.A. Milne

The Adventures of Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi

Aesop's Fables, Aesop

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Gulliver's Adventures in Lilliput, Jonathan Swift

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis

Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain

The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

Stuart Little, E.B. White

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

*** A Christmas Carol

*** Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne

*** The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo

*** Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson

*** Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

*** Poor Richard's Almanack, Benjamin Franklin

*** Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe

*** Tales From Shakespeare, Charles and Mary Lamb

*** Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

 

ANIMALS

 

* Charlotte's Web, E.B. White

* Doctor DeSoto, William Steig

* Frederick, Leo Lionni

* Frog and Toad Are Friends, Arnold Lobel

* Little Bear, Else Holmelund Minarik

* Maisy Drives the Bus, Lucy Cousins

* The Story of Ferdinand, Helen Bannerman

* Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, William Steig

* The Wind in the Willow, Kenneth Grahame

All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot

Andy and the Lion, James Dougherty

Billy and Blaze, C.W. Anderson

Black Beauty, Anne Sewell

Black Stallion series, Walter Farley

Gentle Ben, Walt Morey

Justin Morgan Had a Horse, Marguerite Henry

Lassie Come Home, Eric Knight

Old Yeller, Fred Gipson

Rascal, Sterling North

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Rudyard Kipling

Stellaluna, Janelle Cannon

The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

*** The Red Pony, John Steinbeck

 

VERSE

 

* Dr. Seuss

* Madeline series, Ludwig Bemelmans

* Prayer For a Child, Rachel Field

* Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, Eugene Field

Casey at the Bat, Ernest L. Thayer

The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense, Edward Lear

The New Kid on the Block, Jack Prelutsky

Paul Revere's Ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Songs of Innocence, Robert Blake

Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein

*** Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred, Lord Tennyson

*** How Do I Love Thee?, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

*** If, Rudyard Kipling

*** Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

*** The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe

*** Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost

 

HISTORY

 

Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt (Civil War)

The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (World War II; Holocaust)

Hitty: Her First Hundred Years, Rachel Field

Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes (Revolutionary War)

A Lantern in Her Hand, Bess Streeter Aldrich (Pioneers)

Little House on the Prairie series, Laura Ingalls Wilder (Pioneers)

The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane (Civil War)

*** One of Ours, Willa Cather (World War I)

 

MYSTERY

 

Encyclopedia Brown series, Donald J. Sobol

Nancy Drew series, Carolyn Keene

*** The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

*** The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe

 

CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY

 

Abe Lincoln Grows Up, Carl Sandburg

Graham Bell Invents the Telephone, Katherine Shippen

Hans Brinker, Mary Dodge

Heidi, Johanna Spyri

Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren

Ramona the Pest, Beverly Cleary

Sideways Stories From Wayside School, Louis Sachar

Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing, Judy Blume

*** Best Stories of O. Henry, O. Henry

*** Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan

*** The Story of My Life, Helen Keller

 

SCIENCE FICTION

 

The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov

The Martin Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

The Time Machine, H.G. Wells

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle