Grasshopper New Media Presents...

My favorite part of the day comes after the sun sets.  Sometime around eight each night, my husband gives our son a bath and plops him into our bed.  After bath time comes story time, and while bath time is Papa time, story time is my time.  My little man is warm and clean, smelling fresh of baby wash and lavender bubble bath.  We snuggle together, down into our “big bed,” pull the covers up around us, and read stories.

I’m always on the lookout for new kids’ books.  I’m always surprised at just how bad some of them can be, but when we find a good one, it makes our little night time ritual even sweeter.

I thought I’d share a few of our newest favorites.  When it comes to kids’ books, I’m a pretty tough customer.  Our son is two, so it’s essential that the books have a good picture to word ratio;  too many words, and he gets bored, but too few words, and he can’t enjoy the illustrations.  I’m also a stickler for correct grammar.  I’ve seen some books that use really awful grammar just to keep a rhyme scheme going, but we actually learn grammar by unconsciously memorizing it when we read.   We get an unconscious feel for what “sounds” right.   It just doesn’t make sense to me to introduce your child to the incorrect sentence structure or pronoun use unnecessarily.   Finally, the story and illustrations have to be engaging and, well, downright charming.

I think these three books meet all of those requirements:

The Big Cheese of Third Street, by Laurie Halse Anderson and David Gordon -  Little Benny is a Tom Thumb among the giant Antonellis and Sorensens, but his small stature has made him incredibly apt at climbing.  His superior climbing skills help him become the hero of the local block party, making him the true “Big Cheese.”  What I love about this book is that the narrative voice sounds like something straight out of the lower east side.   The illustrations are beautiful, and keep my son engaged, but the words themselves make this a fun book even for adults to read. Badda-Bing.

That Pesky Dragon- by Julie Sykes and Melanie Williamson

I think I would recommend this book just for the pictures even if the story was only so-so. Luckily, the story is every bit as whimsical and fun as the brightly-colored illustrations.  Little Izzy knows that the dragon on her father’s farm doesn’t sound as mean as everyone else suspects it does, but no one will believe her.  When her father tells her to “run along” one day, Izzy runs straight to the dragon and proves everyone wrong.  Your little dragon will be “rooaaaarrrrrring” along.

The Squeaky, Creaky Bed- by Pat Thomson and Niki Daly

This story uses a repeating refrain to engage children in the telling story.  A little boy loves visiting his grandparents in the country, except for the squeaky, creaky bed.  Animal after animal is added to the mix, until the boy realizes that maybe the squeaks aren’t so bad after all.  The illustrations in this book are wonderful.  Rather than an elderly set of grandparents, Daly has created a set of hippiesque boomers, complete with ying-yang jammies.

I hope you’ll take a look at some of these suggestions, but I’d love to hear some of your own.  How do you decide which children’s books you like the best?  What’s your little munchkin’s favorite bedtime story?

by Lisa D.

Photo graciously provided by jahdakine – texturing, some rights reserved