Friday, November 5, 2010

Friday Fun - Picture Books

Super Spawn loves to read.  Hurrah!

The tricky part is getting him to read something that isn't Thomas the Train or CARS.

So this week when his school had their Scholastic Book Fair, I got excited.  (Duh.  We all would.  lol)

Every day as we came and went from the school I eyed the books.  On Wednesday afternoon I finally took the time to stop and look around.  We made a deal.  Super Spawn could pick a book, and I could pick a book.  This way he got his favorite characters, and I got to search for a new author and/or illustrator to add to our shelves.

*insert squeals of delight here*

I adore picture books.

We wound up with another train book, and this jewel...

Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk

Library Mouse: A Friend's Tale

The blurb from Scholastic: "Sam is a mouse who lives in a library and loves to make up and write his own stories. When he leaves his stories in different parts of the library, humans find the stories and want to know who the writer is."

Cutest. Story. Ever.

One of my all time favorite bedtime stories is Wynken, Blynken, and Nod by Eugene Field.  The version we have is in a compilation book and the illustrations are...gosh...they're breathtaking.  I could stare at the pages for hours.  Combine that with Field's beautiful words...even Super Spawn lays quietly for the story.  (and that's AMAZING)

Do you guys have any favorite picture books you can recommend?  And anyone with little ones have any debut authors/illustrators you're in love with?  I'm always looking for new books to entice him with that are not full of TV/Movie characters.

5 comments:

Susan said...

A library mouse -- how cute is that!? I'm glad you found the perfect book! (Oh, how I love book fairs.)

As for my favorite picture books... Dinotopia and Dr. Seuss were my favorites growing up... And the Berenstain Bears! I don't know any modern books. :(

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod looks beautiful! (I just googled those illustrations.) I think I shall have to procure a copy...

Pam Harris said...

Sadly, I know nothing about picture books--but I'm very excited to see what others recommend. :)

Alicia Gregoire said...

It's been so long since I've dived into picture books, but like Pam I'm excited to see the recommendations.

LTM said...

is this like for a little, little one? My girls love to read, too--but they're 7 & 8 now...

some of our favorite little picture books were:

The Hello-Goodbye Window
Dogzilla
Sherman Crunchley
Eloise in Paris

my youngest made me read Eloise to her every night for a while... :D

Thanks, Holly~

KatOwens: Insect Collector said...

we're having a book fair too. Love 'em.
We ended up with an Olivia book, a dinosaur book, and a book about trucks. I let them pick themselves. I like the idea of mom picking one, too.

We found some great books when we lived in the Netherlands:
The Findus books by Sven Nordqvist (Swede), the Moomin books by Tove Jansson (Finn-Swede) and I love the Dutch Nijntje books by Dick Bruna (she's called Miffy in the US).
The Moomin books are sometimes creepy, we have one about this little character being sucked up in the vacuum. We were afraid it would freak our kids out, but they seemed okay.