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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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