The Seventy Books of 2015

This past year I read with eagerness and intensity, and read a lot of spectacular books. It's been a long time since I've read so much, or with so much joy, (even though many of these books are not uplifting), and I look forward to reading more broadly and more intentionally in the years to come. I'll write a bit about ten of my favorites but you can read my reviews on nearly all of these books on Goodreads. I also made a video about some of the books I've been reading as I've been thinking about the role of race in America, and if you'd like to watch that, it's right here. 

The vast majority of books I read this year were new books to me, but the ones I reread (mostly listening to them on audio book with Owen) are marked with an asterisk.

For a prettier version of this list click here. 

Fiction:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

This book is perfection. I love the narrator--just when you've formed your ill opinion of a certain character you get drifted some private thoughts or feelings of that character that make you want to like them better. The plot twists! The insecurities people feel about each other! I'm not sure I've ever loved a character as much as I love Dorothea. Reading a one hundred page book is nice sometimes, but reading the last hundred pages of a thousand page book? That is just joy. All the work you put in (sometimes literally making charts of the characters so you remember who's who) all the work the author put in of setting up expectations, drawing characters together to a climax, all of it comes together so beautifully.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Passion by Jeannette Winterson

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Remains of the Day by Kasuro Ishiguro

This book is so incredibly beautiful. The story is simple: A butler looks back at his life in service while driving across England on his first vacation in decades. But the telling is complex and tender: so much of emotion, of Englishness, of nationalism, of blue blood and new money, and the sympathies and prejudices between the two world wars. Sad and tender.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides

The Unexpected Mrs. Polifax by Dorothy Gillman

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

This is not the sort of book I usually love. It's super gritty, irreverent, violent, and it's fantastic. The writing is so good, and I learned a lot about the Dominican Republic while reading it. That seems to be one of Junot Diaz' main intentions, with his hilarious and informative footnotes, making fun of his white readers for not knowing anyone else's history, and telling the story with the zip of a comic, and the craft of a poet. Looking forward to reading more of his writing. 

(Not recommended if you don't like to read about: violence, characters who swear all the time, friendzones, or corrupt governments.)

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

A Room with a View by E. M. Forester

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

This book is not only beautiful sentence by sentence, even the structure is stunning. There's a central event (the bombing of St. Malo in WWII) and two central characters, and you live through that day of the bombing hour by hour. Between those hours you jump back in time for rich, colorful backstory, so that as you get each successive piece of that day in St. Malo the characters matter to you more and more as their situations become increasingly dire. This book also focuses a lens on the light of humanity. Not always shone, not always seen, but beautiful.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

Home by Marilynne Robinson

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

The Maytrees by Annie Dillard

Nonfiction/Memoir:

The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris

Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer

Bossypants by Tina Fey

I listened to Tina Fey read her own audiobook and just laughed so hard I cried a little. So much of her humor is in handing us the unexpected, but I was also charmed by her voicing her own fears and her own perspective on them.

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks

Pilgrim at Tinker Creak by Annie Dillard

I want to own this book and pull it off the shelf and read it again and again. Biking over the fields near Leiden in January, I would try to frame what I could see in words, and then I'd hear Annie Dillard had the words already. “Today is one of those excellent January partly cloudies in which light chooses an unexpected part of the landscape to trick out in gilt, and then the shadow sweeps it away. You know you’re alive. You take huge steps, trying to feel the planet’s roundness arc between your feet.”

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King Jr.

It is difficult to say how much this book moved me. The message, the fearless pursuit of justice through nonviolence and love, the exquisite writing, everything about this book left me hungry for more. Not only more of Martin Luther King Jr and his writing, but more of his vision enacted in our world today. Read it. Even if all you read is his letter from the Birmingham Jail, read this book.

Drama:

Our Town by Thornton Wilder*

Beginning Chapter Books:

The Great Cake Mystery by Alexander McCall Smith

Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater

Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel by Nikki Grimes

Middle Grade Fiction:

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park*

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo*

Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead

I love this book. When people talk about "contemporary realistic fiction" for young people the books sometimes the ground is shaky. Maybe they're already dated like the books I read growing up where none of the teenagers have cell phones. The books that really mattered then still matter today because they dealt with bigger issues than phone styles, but here is a book of today. A book I think will last a long time, and which represents a lot of current issues really beautifully. It deals with PTSD, with mysterious and the scary in social interaction, with mean kids, but also with really beautiful siblings and friendships. I was particularly touched by her sensitivity with issues of school dress codes, and "slut shaming" and exploring how these issues come out, and what they mean. It's also just great. You should read it. And also everything Stead has written because it's all fantastic.

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner*

The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner*

Frindle by Andrew Clements*

The House of the Scorpian by Nancy Farmer

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry by Mildred D. Taylor*

I remember this book being both sad and scary from when I was young. I remember asking, "but why?" a lot of times, but I wasn't expecting it to be so incredibly moving as I reread it now as an adult. The story is just beautifully laid out, plot and character, twists and history, and it makes me happy and pains me to read it. I know a lot of people are rereading To Kill a Mockingbird this year with Harper Lee's "new" book coming out. Let me suggest that this is also a book that could use a read or a re-read. There are many ways in which it twins To Kill a Mockingbird, but I love that it tells the story of a black child coming to terms with the implications of her skin and what it means. The questions this book raised about how much property matters startled me. Again and again people talk about--who owns what--be it land or a new car or people or coats or pearl handled pistols, ownership seems to central to this story.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau*

The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud

The Crossover by Alexander Kwame

Ghost Knight by Cornelia Funke

The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Young Adult Fiction:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

East by Edith Pattou

A nostalgic, emotional five stars for this book. I really, really, liked it. The fable of east of the sun and west of the moon told in a novel form, it reminds me of fairytale retellings I read as a young teen, (Robin McKinley and such), and it was very easy to submerge myself in the story. I found it... cozy. Reading it at a bus stop in the freezing rain was comforting, and reading it cozied up with blankets and tea was exactly what I wanted. If you had mixed feelings about His Dark Materials, but still really like polar bears and legends from the far north? This is the book is for you.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Part 1: The Pox Party by M. T. Anderson

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Part 2: Kingdom on the Waves by M. T. Anderson

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman*

Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Flight by Sherman Alexie

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Allegiant by Veronica Roth

Going to another Baby Shower? 12 more suggestions!

So many of my friends are having babies, I want to buy them all stacks of books! Since that is not financially feasible, I’m making a new list of suggestions. If you'd like to see the other lists I've made of children's books, scroll down to the bottom. I'll put the links there! These are all picture books: six are wordless, or nearly so, and six are books that have a special focus on language.

In The Town All Year Round by Rotraut Susanne Berner

This book is dozens of stories in one. Each spread in this oversized book is full of characters and activity, and you can follow the same characters from page to page as their story unfolds. The older man dropped his keys while he was on his run? On the next page the little girl is catching up to return them! It reminds me a little bit of Richard Scarry (without the text) or Where's Waldo (with stories!). It's a real treasure.

Actual Size by Steve Jenkins

This big book is full of pictures of animals shown at actual size. From giant butterflies to tiny fish, the hands of gorillas or the foot of an elephant this is a science book without feeling like a science book. The illustrations are beautiful painted paper cuttings, and they look almost three dimensional. Steve Jenkins's books about animals are always great, but this is my favorite for its simplicity.

Tuesday by David Wiesner

This book made me want to be a children's book illustrator when I was younger. I've loved nearly all of David Wiesner's books, but Tuesday's story of the frogs and their flying lily pads is charming, hilarious, and incredibly beautiful.

Wave by Suzy Lee

My mother-in-law bought me this book one year as a birthday present. It is painted in black and white and blue, and tells the story of a girl and the water one summer's day. The gestures and emotions are so clear and bright. It's a smaller book, not very tall but quite long, so that the spreads of the sea are open and wide, and feel just right.

The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney

A retelling of the old fable of the lion and the mouse, and how the two are able to help each other. The vast glowing watercolors won Pinkney the Caldecott award, and no wonder. It's the sort of book where you can imagine getting an extra copy to cut up and frame, each spread is so beautiful.

Noah’s Ark by Peter Spier

I grew up with Peter Spier's books and love them for their honesty. You don't usually see Noah's Ark books that include Noah shoveling elephant dung, or the animals looking cooped up and irritable. Some pages have many illustrations per page; some have just one big image over the whole spread. He manages to convey both the enormous scale of the water, the giant ark made tiny in comparison, but also the minute details which make life interesting.

So those are some great books which focus on the pictures, and here are some books I love that give special attention to language.

Max’s Words by Kate Banks

I came across this book in college in my children's lit class and I absolutely love it. Max's two older brothers collect things, one coins, the other stamps, but Max doesn't know what to collect. He decides to collect words, and discovered that they are much, much more interesting than coins or stamps. Through the book he and his brothers become better friends, and the illustrations are just right—full of potential's blank spaces.

Ounce Dice Trice by Alastair Reid

I have never read anything quite like Ounce Dice Trice, and that is a shame, because it is incredible. Creative nonsense in the style of Ogden Nash. I've included the page suggesting names for elephants; he also offers alternative titles for each finger, new ways of counting (ounce, dice, trice is the start of one such example), and there are also lists of squishy words and of group noun words. Gundulum of garbage cans, anyone? It's a fantastic read aloud and while kids will love it, it's the grown ups who will really be in for a treat.

Poems for the Very Young selected by Michael Rosen

Disclaimer: I have not actually read this book. I was going to recommend a different book by Michael Rosen, another collection of poetry, when I saw that he did an anthology for very young children—it seemed more in fitting with the rest of this list of suggestions. Every book I have ever read from this man is excellent, and his care and precision with language is wonderful, so even though I have not opened it myself, it seems like the best book I can suggest full of poetry for little ones. If you've read it, I would love to hear what you think!

The Composer is Dead by Lemony Snicket

Lemony Snicket regularly and explicitly works to broaden the vocabulary of his readers. This book opens with one of his signature phrases. It begins, "'Composer' is a word which here means 'a person who sits in a room, muttering and humming and figuring out what notes the orchestra is going to play.' This is called composing. But last night, the Composer was not muttering. He was not humming. He was not moving, or even breathing. This is called decomposing." My favorite of his books, The Composer is Dead is part mystery, part introduction to the orchestra, and entirely excellent. It comes with a cd so you can listen to the music written for the story, and hear the story read out loud.

Amos and Boris by William Steig

Like Lemony Snicket, William Steig makes sure to introduce children to excellent vocabulary, but just works them into his text. When I was reading it for the first time as an adult, I needed to find out what a "phosphorescent sea" was, because phosphorescent wasn't a word I had known. The sentences are just easy to savor. It's the story of a mouse and a whale who become friends and each save the other's life—when the whale is beached, little Amos "races back with two of the biggest elephants he could find." It's that sort of beautiful understatement that I love in this book. Can't get enough of it.

Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss

Last but not least is the wild tongue twister Fox in Socks. Dr. Seuss's books freaked me out a little as a kid. I remember being so affected by a low-tech film version of The Lorax that I was afraid to go in the library it came from—but this one is all about trying to say tricky things. It's great fun to read aloud and faster every time!

Did I miss your favorite wordless book or book cherishing words? What are some other books you like? Let me know in the comments!

If you are interested in more lists of kids books:

12 book suggestions for Babies
More books from authors you already know
Books to make kids laugh
Books dealing with race (feel free to skip my uncomfortable thoughts and go right to the list at the end)
10 best books about Shakespeare

And here's the list of books all together:

In The Town All Year Round by Rotraut Susanne Berner
Actual Size by Steve Jenkins
Tuesday by David Wiesner
Wave by Suzy Lee
The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney
Noah’s Ark by Peter Spier
Max’s Words by Kate Banks
Ounce Dice Trice by Alastair Reid
Poems for the Very Young selected by Michael Rosen
The Composer is Dead by Lemony Snicket
Amos and Boris by William Steig
Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss

Some thoughts about Race and a list of picture books

Over the last few months I have been in near constant distress about the racial issues in this world. I was, I suppose, naively shocked by items in the US news with a police officer shooting the unarmed Michael Brown, and read story after story about protests and heavily armed police and struggled to look for hope as ugly events kept flowing in. Living in The Netherlands in November and December doesn't help much because of the "Zwarte Pieten" or "black Peters" the little helpers to the Dutch version of Santa Claus. I know this is a complex issue, with a lot of history and the tradition has changed a great deal for the better. But living in a progressive, tolerant, and beautiful country where it's normal to see children wearing blackface or hear them singing songs with the chorus, "dumme, dumme, dumme Zwarte Pieten!" (that's "stupid, stupid, stupid black Peter!") scares me for the future of this world. I had just convinced myself that the Dutch were more racist than the Americans when I heard more news that the grand jury had ruled that Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot Michael Brown would not even face trial. And somehow these things kept surprising me. Surprising me the way my classmates in Virginia grad school surprised me when I said, "but interracial marriage isn't a big deal anymore" and everyone in my class looked at me like I had lived in some kind of ignorant bubble. And perhaps, mercifully, I had? I had a fair number of friends from mixed families in my homeschool groups, and in music lessons. My white uncle married a black woman and if it was a big deal in my family, I had, in fact missed it. I felt like the kids reacting to this Cherrios commercial: 

I love that it surprises these kids, but I don't love that it surprises me. I don't want be ignorant about these issues of prejudice, because they are clearly still issues. I also want to be honest about my own unconscious prejudices, including my reluctance to seek out books/movies/media focused on or written by people who don't have the same color skin that I do. This has never been something I've consciously thought. I have never walked around thinking, "I don't want to read any books by Toni Morrison, she's black!" but at the same time, I haven't read any books by Toni Morrison, and I read a lot. So what you could call my new year's resolution is reading a whole lot. I want to read many works of classic literature that I've missed so far, especially books by authors of color or dealing with race. I also want to read some non-fiction, such as "The New Jim Crow," which has been on my reading list for a while. So far I've read MLK's Why We Can't Wait, and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. I started Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon this morning. 

But I also wanted to make a list of books for children, because I am passionate about the impact of stories and pictures on children. Children's books have become less and less diverse in the last few decades as budget cuts to schools and libraries put buying power into the hands of the largely white middle class consumer. The people determining what goes on a best seller list are therefore not librarians and teachers looking for diversity, but parents and grandparents who (totally understandably) don't automatically think about race when choosing books. So here are some picture books and some names you might consider adding to your list when you go to the library, or even when you buy books for kids you know and love. 

Kadir Nelson, author and illustrator
Nelson's clear writing and majestic paintings have won a pile of awards, and his work respected well outside the field of children's literature. He has written a staggeringly excellent book on the history of African Americans for ages 9 or so and up, a biography of Nelson Mandela and one of Harriet Tubman, and has illustrated the words to several Spirituals. Sometimes a bit difficult to search for (as books are listed under author, not illustrator) so here are a few of his works that you might miss just by searching.  

Please, Puppy, Please by Spike Lee
Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln by Doreen Rappaport
Ellington Was Not A Street by Ntozake Shange
Henry's Freedom Box: A Story from the Underground Railroad by Ellen Levine
I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King Jr. 

Jacqueline Woodson, author
Woodson writes for many different age groups, but the link above is for her picture books. It's a really nicely set up website where you can get a good idea about the books by just scrolling through. One of her most widely acclaimed books, The Other Side, is about a black girl and a white girl who become friends in an intensely segregated town. She says she wrote it because, "I wanted to write about how powerful kids can be. [...] They don’t believe in the ideas adults have about things so they do what they can to change the world. We all have this power."

Nikki Grimes, author
I'm not as familiar with her work as with some of these authors but I just read her early reader Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel and it was great. She's known for her biography of Malcolm X, and A Pocketful of Poems, and When Gorilla Goes Walking.

Walter Dean Myers and his son, Christopher Myers are also good to know. WD Myers mostly wrote for older children (his YA book, Fallen Angels shaped my understanding of Vietnam), but he teamed up with his son for the wonderful poem of a book, Looking Like Me. Christopher Myer's Jabberwocky is also fantastic. 

Langston Hughes, My People photography by Charles R. Smith Jr.
This sparse, glowing poem is set to stunning sepia photographs: 

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.
The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people. 

Books by Ezra Jack Keats
Keats was not black himself, but he often populated his books with black children as they were the children who lived near him in NYC. The Snowy Day was the first book with a child of color to win the prestigious Caldecott Award.

Books by Patricia Pollaco
Pollaco is from Eastern Europe (Ukraine, I believe) but she, like Ezra Jack Keats, writes and illustrates books with black and white children. My favorite is Chicken Sunday which is a great story for Easter or any time of year. It includes Pusanky eggs, a beautiful hat in the window, and a gospel choir who sing like low thunder and sweet rain. 







These are just a tiny few! February is Black History Month, so there will be more displays and such in libraries and hopefully bookstores. I've just been focusing on books with black characters and/or authors and illustrators because it seemed appropriate to the prejudice I'm seeing in the news and MLK day on Monday. But here are a couple more lists which include more races than just the black and the white.

Cooperative Children's Book Center's list 
The Gaurdian's list
Cynthia Leitich Smith's list
The Coretta Scott King Awards These are two awards given out by the American Library association to black Authors and Illustrators of books for children and young adults.

Do you have favorite books by black authors or illustrators? Books with black protagonists? I'd love to hear about them. And thanks for reading. 

Books to Make Kids Laugh

The Atlantic recently put out an interview with B. J. Novak about his hilarious children's book, The Book with No Pictures. While I haven't been able to read it yet, (books in English can be tricky to get in hand in this country) the reviews from many sources have me confident I will love it. The humor of the book seems to come from giving children the power to get adults to read to them, even reading silly nonsense words or funny phrases, such as "I am a monkey. I am a robot monkey." What seems most interesting to me is how much work was put into the typography and font size and page layout to help the lay reader with comic delivery. For example, the font for the words "ROBOT MONKEY" looks all digital and robotic, encouraging the adult reading to use a "robot voice."

I had already been thinking of making another big list of kids books (in celebration of my friends everywhere having babies!), so here is a list of books that make kids laugh. Their parents, too.

Let's start with Mo Willems. This man used to write for Sesame Street back when the show was really good, and is now famous for his hilarious kids books. I particularly like the Elephant and Piggie books (you'll find them in the Early Readers section), Knuffle Bunny, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs, Leonardo the Terrible Monster, and Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed. The humor of his books typically comes from his understanding of the extremes of human emotion in all its quirks and absurdities. The illustrations are also rock solid, and even the early reader structure of the Elephant and Piggie books (simple words, limited vocabulary, extensive repetition) is used for comic effect, as the two characters get more and more anxious or excited or sad. We Are in A Book even has a little inside joke for the readers going through for second time in a row.

Jon Scieszka (along with Lane Smith as illustrator and Molly Leach as the brilliant but under-recognized designer) makes books that are hilarious in an entirely different way from Mo Willems. Scieszka's humor is mostly for a bit older kids than Mo Willems: many of his stories including those in The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, are spoofs off of well known fairy tales, so if you don't know the story of the Gingerbread Man, you won't necessarily find it as funny as you could. His books are wacky and rule bending (with jokes on the end papers, the ISBN code, and even the author bio), but in as much as they are irreverent they are also very intelligently put together. Squids will be Squids is in the style of Aesop's Fables, and Math Curse laughs at the silly ways in which people put together math problems for kids, but also shows respect for the honest struggle of figuring out the hows and which ways of numbers.

Some authors that made me laugh as a kid were Steven Kellogg and James Marshall and Shel Silverstein. What I loved best about Steven Kellogg were the tiny details in his wild illustrations. Not only would the pictures be giant mishmashes of unexpected action, but you could see the tiny writing on the advertisements on the walls in the background. My favorite stories of his are Ralph's Secret Weapon (where a kid with a bassoon and a cake defeats a sea monster), The Three Pigs, and Pinkerton, Behave! 

While Kellogg's illustrations are notable for how much he includes, James Marshall's craft shines in how little he needs to put on the page (in words or pictures) to tell incredibly funny and lovable stories. You cannot go wrong with the George and Martha books, but I am also very fond of his Fairy tale/Folk tale retellings.

Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends, and A Light in the Attic kept my brother and me giggling for years, but A Giraffe and a Half was the one we wanted Mom to read out loud to us. It's a tongue twister and full of ridiculous combinations of roses and noses, gluey shoes, trunks filled with skunks and all manner of oddities.

King Bidgood's in the Bathtub (by Audrey and Don Wood) is a silly book with silly illustrations of a king who refuses to leave his bathtub. All the courtiers (in their hilarious fluffy costumes) attempt to make him leave with enticements of lunch, or dancing, or fishing, but only the little page boy can actually get him out of the bubbles.

The Monster at the End of this Book is the only book that a dear friend of mine would take with her when she went babysitting. It was all she needed because whatever children she was reading to, they'd just want to hear this one again and again. Like The Stinky Cheese Man and The Book with No Pictures, it uses the book itself as a tool for comedy, as Grover tries to get his readers to stop turning the pages so that they can continue to avoid the dreaded monster at the end of the book.

Bink and Golly are a pair of characters who now have three books full of the ups and downs of their friendship. They remind me of Calvin and Hobbes—their banter and their antics, even the illustration style, and they are outrageously funny. Although they do not technically qualify as "I can read" books (because of their extensive vocabulary and creative use of sentence structure,) these picture book/comic book mashups are great for kids starting to read on their own.

 

Those are some of my favorite funny books and authors for kids. What are some of yours?

More Books from Five Illustrators you Already Love

Lots of my friends are having babies right now, and I get a lot of questions about good children's books, so here's some more suggestions. Previous posts I've written on kids books are one for this blog about going to a baby shower, and another for The Shakespeare Standard on the best books about Shakespeare for kids, so feel free to check those out as well. In this post I'm going to list a bunch of really famous children's books, and then suggest other great (but less famous) books by the same author or illustrator.

Ezra Jack Keats

The Snowy Day won the Caldecott Award in 1962, and has mesmerized children since that day. A Jewish artist born in 1916, his books quietly promote healthy interactions between generations, races, boys and girls, and even people with disabilities. I love The Snowy Day, but I also love many of his other books. 

Peter's Chair is one of my favorite books for children who are going to have a new sibling. Peter finds his dad painting his find his crib and his highchair pink! Distraught, he takes his (still blue!) chair and run away, only to find he is too big to sit in it. Coming home, he suggests perhaps they should re-paint the chair together. Apartment 3 tells the story of two boys poking around their run-down apartment building as they look for the sound of the harmonica. Some picture books shy away from gritty realities of life, but this one doesn't, cigarette smoke, shouting voices, a scary superintendent even a man who's blind show that beauty can come from unexpected places. A Letter to Amy, tells of Peter's wanting his friend Amy to come to his birthday, but his own shyness about asking her. There's a thunderstorm and some misunderstanding but it ends with happiness.

Barbara Cooney

Less well known than many of the books here, Barbara Cooney's most popular book is Miss Rumphius. If you have missed this one (as I did somehow until grad school), it is the story of a little girl and her life guided by her grandfather's three principles. Travel to far away places, live by the sea, and do something to make the world more beautiful. Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran is a story about kids with fabulous imaginations making a world out of a hillside of mud, rocks and boxes. Eleanor tells the story of the life of Eleanor Roosevelt as an awkward, shy, and unpopular young girl. Perhaps my favorite of Cooney's illustrated books is a one a dear, dear friend gave me for my birthday, called When The Sky is Like Lace by Elinor Lander Horwitz. It's the story of what happens on bimulous nights, full of silliness and wonder, just pure magic to read aloud, with lots of details for little kids to find in the pages. And if you want a Christmas story to read on a long chilly evening, Holly and Ivy tells the story of a little orphaned girl, and a little unloved doll, and a couple without any children who all find each other and are happy when Christmas comes. It's a longer book, with full pages of Rummer Godden's beautiful text, and takes about an hour to read out loud from cover to cover.

Maurice Sendak

Where the Wild Things Are is perhaps one of the most loved children's books. It's a little weird, and a little scary, but it is written and designed with incredible skill. I like his writing too, but most of these books I'm suggesting are ones he illustrated for other authors. A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss is a book of imaginative, playful definitions of everyday things such as mashed potatoes are "to give everybody enough" and the ground is "to make a garden." It's wonderful, and Sendak's pen and ink illustrations are hilarious. Nutshell Library is a set of four tiny books. I know the books are also nice (Chicken Soup with Rice, One was Johnny, etc.) but I remember especially loving how perfectly little the books were. The Little Bear books by Else Holmelund Minarik are less picture books and more "I can read" style, but they are utterly charming. Sendak's animals are more life-like and less surreal than in some of his other books, but with no less personality. If you prefer the weird side of Sendak's illustrations, let me recommend the Christmas classic, The Nutcracker by E. T. A. Hoffman. The pictures are strange, even grotesque, but profoundly fitting for the strange little fairytale.

 

Chris Van Allsburg

Chris Van Allsburg's favorite letter from a child is this, "Dear Mr. Van Allsburg, I love the books you write. I am so glad your books are so weird because I am very weird. I think you are weird but great. I wish a volcano and a flood could be in my room when I am bored." 

Best known for The Polar Express, Chris Van Allsburg's drawings and paintings are intricately detailed, but always just a little off. Perhaps a cathedral with every arch and shadow perfect and precise, but the nun and her chair float 100 feet above the floor. My favorite are The Wreck of the Zephyr two stories in one, and a ship that might fly? The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, a set of enigmatic pictures and glimpses into stories we can only guess at, and which has been the seed of many, many writing projects, I'm sure. The Stranger combines an odd visitor with the changes of the seasons, and leaves questions tantalizingly open at the end.

 

Tomie dePaola

Tomie is known to many for Strega Nona, the tale of the old lady with the magic pot of pasta, but he has illustrated over 200 books in his career, many of them about Italy, folktales, stories of Saints and Bible stories, but also books for holidays and nursery rhymes. I'll share four of my favorites. The Art Lesson is a story from Tomie's early days in school, and the woes of only being allowed to draw with school crayons. It is funny, sweet, and an excellent read-aloud even for quite young children. The Clown of God is the only picture book I brought with me to The Netherlands, a book which tells a great deal about the connection between faith and work. It's a good enough story that small children (maybe 5 and up?) will get caught up in it, but deep enough that adults will keep coming back to it. Bill and Pete go down the Nile is one of my favorites from growing up, and to this day I can still remember Andrew and I chiming in with my mom as she read, "'ooooooo' said all the little crocodiles." Bill is a crocodile, and Pete is his "toothbrush" and together they save a giant diamond from the bad guy trying to steal it from the museum. The Days of the Blackbird is a Northern Italian folktale about a little girl, her sick father, and how a dove became a blackbird through kindness.

 

And again in a concise form without all the pictures and descriptions for easy use:

Ezra Jack Keats 

Known for: The Snowy Day

Other excellent books: Apt. 3, Peter's Chair, A Letter to Amy

Barbara Cooney

Known for: Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

Other excellent books: Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran, Eleanor by Barbara Cooney, When the Sky is Like Lace by Elinor Lander Horwitz, and Holly and Ivy by Rummer Godden. 

Maurice Sendak

Known for: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

Other excellent books: A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss, Nutshell Library by Maurice Sendak, Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik, and The Nutcracker by E. T. A. Hoffman

Chris Van Allsburg

Known for: The Polar Express

Other excellent books: The Wreck of the Zephyr, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, The Stranger

Tomie DePaola

Known for: Strega Nona

Other excellent books: Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile, The Art Lesson, The Clown of God, and The Days of the Blackbird

Hope you enjoy!