99 of our favorite books for kids ages 0-5

I'm nearing my fifth year of parenthood and I've decided that this makes me a connoisseur of great children's literature. It's pretty simple, really. The perfect book must both appeal to a child and not make a parent's head explode after the fifth reading. I don't like books with preachy morals, but I don't mind a lesson with my lit either. I like a combination of short and long books, for obvious reasons. Illustrations are key, but once Annabella turned 4, they no longer needed to be on every page. I've spent some time compiling our favorites.

What are yours?

1. The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
2. Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
3. Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth
4. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
5. The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
6. Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
7. One Morning in Maine by Robert McCloskey
8. Crow Boy by Taro Yashima
9. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
10. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendack
11. Umbrella by Taro Yashima
12. The Sneeches by Dr. Seuss
13. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
14. How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
15. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendack
16. Hug by Jez Alborough
17. Oh the Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss
18. Library Lion by Michele Knudsen
19. The Empty Pot by Demi
20. Corduroy by Don Freeman
21. The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola
22. Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry
23. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
24. Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
25. Pierre by Maurice Sendack
26. Fish is Fish by Leo Lionni
27. Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary
28. Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary
29. Henry Huggins by Beverly Cleary
30. Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Leonni
31. Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary
32. The Paper Bag Princess by Robert N. Munsch
33. Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems
34. A Bargain for Francis by Russell Hoban
35. The Little Train by Lois Lenski
36. The Little Airplane by Lois Lenski
37. The Little Fire Engine by Lois Lenski
38. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
39. The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary
40. Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion
41. Ramona's World by Beverly Cleary
42. Are You My Mother? by PD Eastman
43. The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper
44. Owl Moon Jane Yolen
45. Eloise by Kay Thompson
46. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
47. Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed (Obviously) by Eileen Christelow
48. A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni
49. Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
50. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
51. Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathman
52. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.
53. We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury
54. Skippy Jon Jones in Mummy Trouble by Judy Schachner
55. Carl's Afternoon in the Park by Alexandra Day
56. Ruby the Copycat by Margaret Rathmann
57. Chicken Soup with Rice by Maurice Sendack
58. Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester
59. Falling Up by Shel Silverstein
60. The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein
61. I Was So Mad by Mercer Mayer
62. Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like by Jay Williams
63. Time for Bed by Mem Fox
64. Humphrey the Lost Whale by Wendy Tokuda and Richard Hall
65. Richard Scary's Best Word Book Ever Richard Scary
66. Curious George Goes to the Hospital by H.A. Rey
67. Curious George Takes a Job by H.A. Rey
68. Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes
69. Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr.
70. My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss
71. Henry and the Paper Route by Beverly Cleary
72. Dig Dig Digging by Margaret Mayo
73. Fancy Nancy by Jane O'connor
74. Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy by Jane O'connor
75. Nurse Nancy by Kathryn Jackson
76. Fire Truck by Peter Sis
77. How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen
78. What Do You Want? by Lars Klinting
79. Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt
80. Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss
81. Horton Hatches an Egg by Dr. Seuss
82. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
83. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
84. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
85. The Snow Globe Family by Jane O'Connor
86. Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
87. May I pet your dog by Stephanie Calmenson
88. Olivia Saves the Circus by Ian Falconer
89. Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae
90. Alphabet Soup by Kate Banks
91. I Love You the Purplest by Barbara M. Joosse
92. Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary
93. Bub or the Very Best Thing by Natalie Babbitt
94. There's a Wocket in My Pocket by Dr. Seuss
95. The Mysterious Tadpole by Steven Kellogg
96. Frog Goes to Dinner by Mercer Mayer
97. One Frog Too Many by Mercer Mayer
98. Frog on His Own by Mercer Mayer
99. It's My Birthday by Helen Oxenbury

Review: The Baby Lottery

Please don't call this book chick lit.

In The Baby Lottery, by Kathryn Trueblood, the problems of the characters are real --messy, uncomfortable, profoundly sad, and often just plain mundane.

The story follows five friends from college who are facing down their late thirties. Nan, formerly a single mom is now comfortably married. Virginia, working mother of a 5 year old, has just separated from her husband. Jean and her husband have divorced after years of unsuccessful fertility treatments lead him to an affair. Tasi is happily single. Charlotte is married and is considering a late-term abortion.

The Baby Lottery is filled with sentiments that are as universal as they are direct.

"Here's the funny part about forgiveness: you never know if you mean it or not."

"'Brothers and sisters are the main social unit. They never marry or move away. Lovers come and go, kids come and go...'"

It also uses metaphors that although hilarious and right on target to me, might not be as universal.

"She's like those people with a live-in nanny who tell you they never let their children watch TV."

Trueblood's characters show that while there's both joy and security in child-rearing and marriage, there are perks to being unattached in your late thirties too. But then there are the obstacles. And for the first time, friends you've had for fifteen years or more may be facing entirely different problems and might not be able to help guide you through your own maze. The conflicts between their decisions and yours could easily destroy the friendships forever. If you this rings true to you, then find yourself a copy of The Baby Lottery . You won't be sorry.

Disclosure: Kathryn found my blog and sent me a review copy of her book. We'll be interviewing her on an upcoming podcast about how to promote your book online. Kathryn is also an assistant professor at Western Washington University. If you have questions you'd like me to ask during the interview, e-mail me at megan@twit.tv.

Review: Zen Shorts

A few weeks ago I randomly grabbed a book off the shelf of the kids' section at the public library. The title intrigued me as did the cover illustration. Why would a panda be wearing shorts?

Zen Shorts is the story of two brothers and a sister who meet a panda named Stillwater. He tells them simple stories that are interesting to kids and based Zen principles (as I learned from reading the author's note at the end of the book.)

The illustrations are also fantastic. Geeks will appreciate that Muth has worked on several graphic novels, including Neil Gaiman's Sandman series.

We had to return this book before the due date and not for the usual reason we return books before their due date, which is because if I have to read them one more time my head will explode. We had to return it because we were reading it so much that the pages started to pull out from the binding. So, we returned it and I bought my own copy and several extra copies to give as gifts.

I am not a particularly Zen person, but I aspire to be. And I have no idea if the kids understand the principles in this book, but I've always believed that at every stage my kids understand way more than I think they do.

Pining for Klickitat Street

Annabella has been obsessed with Beverly Cleary's books for several months now. It started with Henry Huggins and now we're working through the Beezus and Ramona books and the Ralph Mouse books.

I love these books.

I love them because I read them as a child and it's wonderful to be reading them to Annabella. Some of the books we've read are my own copies that my parents saved. I watch as Annabella traces her finger over where I scrawled my name and address thirty years ago.

It's easy to say that these books are timeless. How else would they still be so popular after some of them have been in print for over 50 years? But I also love them for how dated they are. What book for young readers today would feature this scene between a father and his young daughter:

"Mr. Quimby blew a puff of smoke toward the ceiling. 'I expect to be one of those old men with a long gray beard who has his picture in the paper on his hundredth birthday and who tells reporters he owes his long life to cigarettes and whiskey.'" - Ramona and Her Father (1977)

What's even more amusing is how the childhoods of the kids on Klickitat street span decades. The books were written over many years, but the kids age only a year per book. Most of the Henry Huggins books were written in the fifties and it shows. The kids roam the neighborhood with almost no parental supervision and their lives seem relatively simple compared to the Ramona books where fathers lose jobs and mothers are forced to become "liberated" and go back to work.

Even the early Ramona books seem strange to our modern parenting sensibilities. In Ramona the Pest (1968) Ramona is in kindergarten and her mother leaves her at home in the morning to walk to school by herself. In kindergarten! Skip ahead a few books to Ramona Forever (1984) and her parents struggle with the decision to leave Ramona and her teenage sister alone together after school.

Parenting styles change fast. I look at the things on my pregnant friends' baby registries and find myself spouting off like an old lady. "Back in my day there was no such thing as breast pumps that fit in backpacks or organic baby clothes!" And every parent I know wishes their own kids could have childhoods like they did, without the Internet or Bratz Dolls or DVRs or whatever evil (necessary or not) that is unique to the new millennium.

I know there's the temptation to lament about the good old days when things were simpler, especially when it comes to parenting. The truth is that every generation of parents had their MySpace problem. Perhaps Beverly Cleary herself said it best. In an interview on NPR on the occasion of her 90th birthday in 2006 Cleary was asked if Ramona changed over the decades. "I don't think children themselves have changed that much," she said. "It's the world that's changed."

Loving Lookybook

Every once in a while someone sends me something that simply can't wait until the next episode of Jumping Monkeys. Especially since we won't have an episode this Saturday because the holidays are kicking my butt.

So, thanks to Ed for sending me a link to Lookybook, where you can browse through picture books to see what they really look like. Yes, you can do this in the bookstore or the library too, but if your kids are anything like mine in the bookstore, "browsing" is not something they leave you a lot of time for.

You can also embed the books on your blog. Here are a few of my recommendations from our bookshelf. But, don't take my word for it.

Review: Bob Books

I am a reader. I have always been a reader. My mother took me to the library every week when I was a child. I wanted to live there. Marco is also a reader. He refuses to pay more than $12 to get his hair cut, but he won't blink an eye at buying a $30 hardcover novel every week. And, he actually reads them.

All three of our children ask to be read to several times a day, not just before bed. They see us reading our own books all the time. And for several hours each day Annabella will listen to audio books on her CD player. She recognizes letters and can write many of them. She sees her 7-year-old cousin read and when she recites books that she's memorized, she imitates the slow and steady tone he uses to sound out the words.

But if I ever try to encourage her to read on her own, she acts as if I've just tried to poke her with a corkscrew. 

I decided that maybe I was just doing it wrong. So, I was interested when MotherTalk offered to send me the Bob Books for beginning readers by Bobby Lynn Maslen & John R. Maslen. Annabella was very excited when the books arrived. The set came with over a dozen small, paper back books with brightly colored covers. And even though the books are a lot simpler than the books I normally read to her, she listened with the same quiet attention as she listens to the plot-heavy Henry Huggins.

The Bob Books start slowly, with only a few sounds at a time. The sounds that each book uses are listed at the beginning of the book. Annabella had about five minutes of patience with me asking her to sound out the letters and then she said plainly, "Mom, I want you to read it." When I tried to point to the words as I read them, she pushed my hand away. "I can't see the pictures!" I tried to encourage her a little more until she shouted with all the exasperation a four and half year old can muster, "I DON'T WANT YOU TO TEACH ME TO READ!"

I've consulted my expert sister and she assures me that her son (now an avid reader) had the same angst over reading, until one day when he didn't. Her friends report similar experiences. And yet, it's still hard to know where encouragement becomes pressure. If you take the training wheels off too early, your child can take some mean falls off their bike that they might just not recover from. Leave them on too long and they become a lot harder to take off at all.

So, I've put away the BOB Books for a while. If I'm going to do the reading, then it's going to be our steady rotation of Beverly Cleary and Dr. Seuss. I'll try the Bob Books again in a few months.

Here's a look inside Book 1 of Set 1 of the Bob Books.

Win an autographed copy of "On Borrowed Wings"

A few weeks ago I reviewed the novel On Borrowed Wings, by Chandra Prasad. I just found out that the publisher has put aside an autographed copy of the book just for Jumping Monkeys readers.

To enter to win the book, please do one of the following:

1. Subscribe to the Jumping Monkeys podcast.

2. Tell a friend about the Jumping Monkeys podcast.

3. Review the Jumping Monkeys podcast on iTunes. (The more positive reviews we have, the more likely we are to be featured prominently on iTunes.)

4. All of the above.

Then e-mail me and let me know which of the four options you chose. On October 8th, 2007 I will put all the e-mails into a hat and choose one at random. I realize that there is absolutely no way for me to know whether you actually subscribed to the podcast, told a friend, or left a review. But, we're all friends here, right?

UPDATE: Congrats to Dustin. I pulled his e-mail out of the hat. Well, actually it was a bowl. I'll pass on your address to the publisher as soon as you e-mail it to me. And thanks to everyone who subscribed. 

Review: On Borrowed Wings

One of the things I like about being part of MotherTalk is that I'm asked to read books that I might never have discovered otherwise. On Borrowed Wings, by Chandra Prasad, is one of these books.

On Borrowed Wings is the fictional story of Adele Pietra, a girl from the granite quarries of Stony Creek, "a granite town at a time when granite was going out of fashion." Adele attends Yale University in the 1930's, before the school admitted women. She goes disguised as her brother with her hair cut short and her breasts bound.

This book is far more than a Just One of the Guys period piece. Prasad tackles issues of family loyalty, race, and class, as well as gender. The fact that Adele is passing as a boy is hardly the point. If you left home for college and went to a school where you don't know anyone, you probably had similar experiences. We try on a lot of disguises in those years in an attempt to figure out who we really are.

The book made me think about how I took my own college education for granted. I wasn't surprised when I learned that the college I went to didn't admit women until 1969. When I was there in the early nineties, there were still more men than women by a large margin, even when the opposite was true at most American universities. Because it was a school that specialized in math and science, the culture was not particularly friendly to women undergraduates. I didn't mind this and I think it went a long way in preparing me to work in the field of technology, which is also still dominated by men.

Still, a male-dominated culture is far different than a male-only culture. I have always appreciated that my parents were able to pay for me to go to college and I try never to miss an opportunity to thank them for it (Thanks, Mom & Dad!). But I haven't spent much time thanking the people who made it possible for me, as a woman, to attend the university at all.

I'm really glad that I had a chance to read this book. Not least of all because it's refreshing to read something that has nothing to do with parenting young children or technology. It's a simple story, but very well-researched and literary. There are a few moments in the book that require a suspension of disbelief. For example, why would a racist eugenics professor trust a student with an Italian last name?  But mostly I was along for the ride and enjoyed most every page.  

Review: Girlology

Have you noticed that the 80's are back in fashion? There's something disconcerting about seeing pre-teen girls wearing the exact same style of clothing that I wore when I was their age in the mid-eighties.

After reading the latest book on my Parent Bloggers review shelf, I realized that I shouldn't be surprised. Fashions never change and neither do all those questions that every teenage girl is afraid to ask. The only thing that's different now is that it's a lot easier to get answers. The right answers? That's a whole different story.

Girlology: Hang-Ups, Hook-Ups, and Holding Out is a book of questions and answers for teen girls, written by Melisa Holmes (an ob-gyn) and Trish Hutchison (a pediatrician.) The topics cover the adolescent angst spectrum from acne to alcohol, ADD to STDs, hormones to hymens. The answers are quick and easy, and best of all honest.

Each chapter also begins with a short story called "She Did What?" The author's say that the names in the stories have been changed, but the stories themselves are real. These sections have that signature after-school special feel to them. And just like the after-school specials of my youth, they're not necessarily artfully written, but I secretly enjoyed them anyway.

I was surprised at how interested I was in reading Girlology. I'm about 20 years too late for it to be helpful to me and about 20 years too early for it to be helpful to me in talking to Annabella. And yet, I was still fascinated by the topics and still surprised at how much I still didn't know about the opposite sex.

Is this book for you?

If you're a teenage girl? Yes. If you're the mother, father, friend, teacher, or confidant of a teenage girl? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

These days the questions that my kids ask me are fascinating and fun to answer. The most complicated Annabella has gotten lately was "Why do girls get to wear leotards to gymnastics and boys just wear regular clothes?" I realize that with the diapers, baby gates, and temper tantrums, so go these easy questions. I'm not saying that Girlology will offer all the answers, but I do hope that when the time comes it will give Annabella and I a place to start the conversation.

Review: Flirting in Cars

I know, I know, don't judge a book by it's cover, right? But when you see a headless women wearing pedal pushers and high-heeled shoes on the cover of a novel, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be like inside. This was the case with the latest MotherTalk book tour selection, Flirting in Cars, by Alisa Kwitney.

First, I must come clean and admit that I don't read chick lit or mommy lit. I totally understand escapism, but mine usually takes the form of Gilmore Girls re-runs or mommy blogs. But, when the latest list of MotherTalk books came up for review, I decided to expand my horizons. Most of the books I've read lately have been chosen by my book club. We have a strange way of voting on books and for some reason our selections have been pretty depressing. We've read novels about prisoners of war, leprosy, down syndrome, the apocalypse, and female circumcision. Sometimes it's not so much that we're a book club, but a self-flagellation circle, with wine.

To take a break from such dark and serious fare I chose to read Flirting in Cars. It's the story of a Zoe, a forty-one year old journalist and mother who moves from Manhattan to the country so her daughter can go to a school that will do a better job of catering to her learning disability. The book is told in the alternating points of view of Zoe and Mack, a thirty-something army vet who was born and raised in the small town where Zoe moves. Zoe can't drive. Mack is a driving instructor. You get the picture.

There are lots of obstacles in their relationship -- Zoe's love of organic goat cheese versus Mack's love of pepperoni pizza, the fact that Zoe's daughter Maya still sleeps in her bed, their different religions, and a ten year age difference. What makes this more than just a simple "opposites attract" story is the way Kwitney writes about the interesting conflict that comes from the fact that Mack works for Zoe and when they start a relationship he starts to feel like a kept man.

The characters and scenery of the town where Zoe moves are colorful and quirky and in their best moments they remind me of one of my favorite novels, Empire Falls by Richard Russo. Throughout the book, Kwitney also creates some really interesting scenes with funny dialog. The story gets going right away with a pretty hilarious interaction between Zoe and a pushy, young Manhattan mom who's interested in buying Zoe's apartment. However, despite the author's attempt at endearing Zoe to readers by comparing her to a far worse version of the self-absorbed metropolitan mommy, I still found Zoe sort of elitist and annoying. I appreciate that she's independent and that living in a small town makes her change, but I never connected to her in a way that I think I need to to enjoy the novel, escapist or not. I found Mack slightly more interesting, but I really never connected to him either and often wondered why he put up with Zoe.

I'd like to say that Flirting in Cars made me appreciate chick lit and want to read more, but it didn't. Right now my book club is reading Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. And despite the fact that I've read and re-read the first three chapters and still have very little idea of what's going on, I feel like I'm getting something more out of it than I would from lighter lit.