You are what you read! Allegedly.
This took positively FOREVER to put together, but I don't care because this entry makes me happy!
Image-heavy picspam! You have been warned!
My Top 10 Favorite Children's Books
10.
The Mysterious Tadpole
written and illustrated by Steven Kellogg
| The Mysterious Tadpole is about a boy named Louis whose Scottish uncle sends him a tadpole for his nature collection. Louis names his tadpole Alphonse and excitedly waits for him to turn into a frog. |
| Right away, Louis notices that Alphonse doesn't act like a normal tadpole. He eats cheeseburgers and instead of turning into a frog, he just gets bigger and bigger. Eventually, Alphonse is too big to fit into the bathtub, and Louis's parents say he has to go. |
So Louis smuggles Alphonse into the school pool. Which is great, until there's a swim meet. The rest of the story contains hijinks involving sunken treasure being used to finance the construction of a swimming pool large enough to accomodate Alphonse and the revelation that Louis's uncle caught Alphonse in "a large lake near his cottage called Loch Ness." Heh.
Steven Kellogg also wrote and illustrated several of my other favorite kid's books, including the definitive version of Chicken Little and The Island of the Skog, both of which oh-so-nearly made this list. |
09.
The Bernstein Bears' Christmas Tree
written and illustrated by Stan and Jan Bernstein| I loved the Bernstein Bears, and this is absolutely my favorite story. And it rhymes! That's always a huge plus in my book. |
| The Bernsteins are a little too caught up in the trappings of Christmas. Papa Bear decides that no way are the trees that Grizzly Gus is selling at the local Christmas tree lot good enough for all of their beads, baubles, "beerlooms" and festoons. So he, Brother Bear and Sister Bear all set out to find and chop down the best, biggest, fullest, most beautiful tree they can find. |
| But every time they find a tree, it's already occupied by skunks or squirrels or crows or hawks or owls. It gets later and later, and they finally find the most absolutely perfect tree ever. But just as Papa is about to cut it down, he sees a tiny window... |
| It turns out that the tree is home to a family of teensy birds, and they're trimming their own Christmas tree. Papa has an epiphany and tells the cubs that they'll buy their tree from Grizzly Gus. But when they arrive back in town, every tree is gone. They set back home, tired and disappointed. |
| But when they get there, they find that all of the animals whose homes they spared have decorated the Bernstein Bears' tree house with all of their special Christmas things. It is the true spirit of Christmas! |
08.
Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters
illustrated by John Steptoe
| Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters is based on a South African fairy tale. Even being non-western, it is a fairly typical story about two beautiful sisters -- one who is kind and good and sings songs to garden snakes, the other who is mean and sour and spends most of her time primping in front of a mirror. |
Word arrives from the city that the king has invited the most Worthy and Beautiful Daughters of his kingdom to assemble at the palace so he can choose one of them to be his wife. (I know, right?) The mean sister cheats and is unkind to all of the strangers who ask her for help along the way. Of course these are tests, and she fails them all. The nice sister passes every one, and when she arrives at the palace, she finds her little friend the garden snake. Who is actually the handsome king in disguise, obviously! He tells her that he has stalked her known all along that she was the most Worthy and Beautiful Daughter in all the land. |
| So it is a pretty silly story, but I loved it when I was a little girl, and I especially loved the beautiful illustrations. And also arguing with my sisters over which one of us was the most like Manyara the meanie. |
07.
The Fairy Rebel
written by Lynne Reid Banks, illustrated by William Geldart| The Fairy Rebel is a more of a chapter book than a book for little kids, but I listened to it on tape when I was very young. It is by the same author who wrote The Indian in the Cupboard, which I unfortunately hate. |
| It is about a former dancer named Jane whose career was ended by a tragic accident. The same accident prevents her from having a child. She is sad and lonely, and she spends most of her free time sitting quietly in her garden. One day a tiny fairy named Tiki lands on her big toe. She has been "earthed" because her elf friend tricked her into trying to fly between Jane's toes, only Tiki had been hitting the nectar a little too much, and she was too fat to to make the gap. |
Tiki and Jane become friends, and Tiki magicks Jane so that she can finally have the baby she so desperately wants.
But there's also a very wicked, Big Brother-esque fairy queen with an army of wasps who forbids her fairy subjects to have contact with or do magic for humans. There are tons of rules and regulations, and fairies aren't allowed to cry or fall in love. And when the queen finds out about Jane's fairy baby, all sorts of bad things start happening. |
| Of course, everything turns out all right in the end, and you get everything you never even knew you wanted. I was one of those little girls who loved fairies, and this book absolutely hit the spot for me when I was a kid. |
06.
The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear
written by Audrey and Don Wood, illustrated by Don Wood
| This book is so funny! The premise is simple -- it's about a little mouse who picks a Red Ripe Strawberry. What makes the book is the narration; the narrator speaks directly to the little mouse, and the little mouse responds in kind. The narrator basically tricks the mouse into thinking that a Big Hungry Bear is coming for his strawberry, and there's nothing he can do to stop it. |
| No matter how he well he disguises or guards the strawberry, there is nowhere he can run or hide from the Big Hungry Bear! |
| Of course, the narrator has a solution: "Cut it in two, share half with me, and we'll both eat it all up! Now that's one strawberry the big, hungry bear will never get!" |
| It's such a fun book to read because you're a participant; you get to cleverly trick the little mouse. But it's not mean-spirited. At the end, the mouse is happy, and he doesn't realize that you've outsmarted him. I love it! |
05.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
as told by Marianna Mayer, illustrated by K.Y. Craft
| Of course you all know the story. It's a standard. But K.Y. Craft's detailed illustrations make this version special. K.Y. Craft is a very famous fantasy artist, and if you read fantasy as a kid, you've almost certainly read books featuring her work on the covers. |
| I've only just now come to appreciate how incredibly creepy this story is! When I was a kid, I guess the thought of a "twilight kingdom" where you could dance until you wore holes in your shoes sounded kind of romantic and interesting. But it's really not! |
| Having read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (fantastic book! highly recommended!), I better understand the context of the fairy tale, and it is very spooky. Can you imagine if you never got any sleep because you were enchanted by night to dance and dance and dance in a parallel faerie universe until your shoes had holes in them? SCARY. |
04.
The Angel and the Soldier Boy
written and illustrated by Peter Collington
| Oh, how I loved this picture book. I think most kids like to imagine that their toys have lives of their own, and this book plays into that. It's framed as the dream of the sleeping girl, and it's all about her two favorite toys -- an angel and a soldier boy. She dreams that little pirates rob her piggy bank. Her toy soldier bravely engages them, but he is outnumbered and dragged off to the pirate's lair, which turns out to be a model ship on top of the family piano. |
| The angel wakes up and wonders where her friend the solider boy has gone off too. She investigates and discovers his tiny toy sword abandoned by the empty piggy bank. She sets off after her friend. She has several adventures and close-calls, involving an encounter with a wasp, difficult journeys down stairs and up rubber plants, and a narrow escape from the family cat. She infiltrates the pirate ship and frees her friend, and together they return the stolen loot to the piggy bank. | |
It's a cute story, and I really like the friendship between the soldier boy and the angel. And I especially like that the angel saves the soldier boy (not vice versa), because that's pretty cool. But it's not preachy about it. She's an angel, she wears a dress, and she saved the day. She doesn't challenge the pirates stupidly directly; she defeats them by being sneaky. Viva la Girl Power! |
03.
Madeline and the Bad Hat
written and illustrated by Ludwig Bemelmans
| Speaking of girl power, how great are the Madeline books? I love them. I think the first book -- the one where Madeline gets her appendix out and the other girls are jealous of her scar -- is probably my favorite, but I also really adore Pepito, so this book won. |
| What's funny is that when I was a kid, I always thought the illustrations were kind of ugly. But they are so great! I love the style. I also loved the cartoons that Christopher Plummer narrated. |
02.
The Lorax
written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss
| The Once-ler came, the Once-ler saw, the Once-ler took. He clear-cut the Truffula Trees to make ugly thneeds. His factories polluted the water with sludge that drove out the Humming-Fish and smog that drove away the Swomee-Swans. |
| The Lorax, who speaks for the trees (and is a bit of a scold, even though he was right in the end), tries to stop the Once-ler from destroying the environment, but he fails. And when the Truffula trees have gone, and all that is left is an empty crumbling factory, the Lorax takes himself away, and the Once-ler finally gets the message. But it is too late! |
But it is not too late for us, is the moral of the story.
It is perhaps a little preachy, but it is one of my favorite books. I do not think there is anything wrong with learning lessons from books, and I think it is an excellent read for little environmentalists in the making. I've read that the mysterious and unseen Once-ler is supposed to be the reader, but I've no idea if that's true. The hilarious thing is that the book was actually banned from some schools and libraries for its "anti-forest industry content." The timber industry even put out a book in response called The Truax. SATIRE IS DEAD. |
01.
Dinotopia
written and illustrated by James Gurney
| Dinotopia reads like the journals of Arthur Denison, a scientist who is shipwrecked with his son on a remote and isolated island where humans and dinosaurs live together in what is essentially a utopian society. It sounds like crack, but it's actually awesome. Plus, DINOSAURS! Like most little kids, I totally loved dinosaurs. I still love dinosaurs! |
| The universe is remarkably detailed and well-plotted (which is unusual for the work of an illustrator), and the field journal format allows for tons of variation. Character studies, architectural drawings, diagrams, trivia, music, naturalist sketches -- Dinotopia has got it all. |
| And James Gurney is, of course, an extremely accomplished artist. The books are gorgeous. |
| Plug! I've recently become a big fan of James Gurney's blog. In the few months I've been reading it, it's apparent that James Gurney's interests are incredibly broad and varied, which I think is reflected in Dinotopia. Apart from providing for the field journal format, I think making Arthur Denison a scientist worked so well because it allowed for a character who is as curious as James Gurney. If you're anything of an artist, especially of the fan/fantasy variety, I think you'll love his blog as much as I do. |
So what about you guys? What are your favorites?
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caitiedidit) wrote,
