Library Books Review #1
Meema and Pop-Pop have been taking Natalie to story/craft hour at the library every Thursday for a few months now and always bring home a stack of books. We’ve been wanting to keep track of our favorites, and finally I realized—what better way than to blog about them?
While I love the library, it’s not set up to browse as well as bookstores are. All the shelves are at kid level, which means that adults have to crawl on hands and knees to look through the books. I used to scour amazon and online forums for recommendations of great books for toddlers and go to the library with a list. Now we go and grab. Meema often chooses books that the librarians put on display on top of the shelves. Natalie sometimes chooses her own books, also at random. It’s like a treasure hunt that way…sometimes we end up with great books that we renew over and over, and sometimes we bring home books that are either boring or too long or wordy to hold Natalie’s attention.
Here are some recent favorites:
Monsieur Saguette and his Baguette
by Frank Asch
Monsieur Saguette and his Baguette tells the story of a man who uses his baguette to solve all sorts of problems, from rescuing cats to stopping muggers. In this book, the baguette is the hero and Monsieur Saguette is like MacGyver, but with bread as his only tool. Appealing for everyone, no? Natalie really likes this book, especially after Pop-Pop took her to the bakery to buy her very own baguette. I like the book because of its message of ingenuity and introduction to a different language and culture. Last night at dinner, she looked at me and said, “Mommy, can you say ‘boulangerie?’”
Tanka Tanka Skunk
by Steve Webb
It’s too bad that this book is “currently unavailable” on amazon….it’s such a treasure! It uses names of animals to teach syllables and rhythm. The illustrations are bright and bold and reading it aloud was a bit of a tongue-twister, but lyrical and fun. We all loved it. Hopefully your local library will have it!
What are your favorite children’s books?