Favorite Thing #3 – My 10 Favorite Picture Books to Read to My Children

This is such a fun one for me. I love to read to my kids. Reading is a huge part of the culture here in our home. My kids have grown up with Austin and I reading to them and with their noses quite often inside a book themselves and even before they could read the words. In our home, story is something that sparks conversation, helps us to ask hard questions, and propels us in growth. I get asked regularly how we created this culture of reading in our home. And I could give you a number of thoughts on the issue. But the biggest one is simply that Austin and I love to read to the kids. And it is obvious to them. They know that they if they want to keep daddy just a little longer before he leaves for the office, they should bring a book and sit in his lap. They know that if they want Mama to sit still and snuggle, the best way is to bring a book. Some of my very favorite memories of times with my kids involve a fort and huge stack of books. On Wednesday I shared C.S. Lewis’s famous quote, “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” And we firmly believe that around here. Keeping great books at hand in our home is one of the reasons why we spend so much time reading. So, for Friday’s favorite thing, I have drafted a list of my 10 favorite picture books to read to my children. These are not necessarily their favorites (although many are), they aren’t necessarily the ones that I believe teach the best lessons (although many do), and this is not a list of the books that I believe contain the best literary content (although again, many do). These are purely my favorite 10 picture books to read to my kids. So, after all of that rambling, here they are:

The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear, by Don and Audrey Wood
The Giant Jumperee, by Julia Donaldson & Helen Oxenbury
Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey
A Visitor for Bear, by Bonny Becker
Dear Zoo, by Rod Campbell
A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee, by Chris Van Dusen
Little Blue Truck, by Alice Schertle
Click, Clack, Moo, Cows That Type, by Doreen Cronin
Caps for Sale, by Esphyr Slobodkina
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, by Bill Martin Jr. & Eric Carl

You may already own many of these. In fact, I was tempted to come up with a list of books you might not recognize right away and perhaps I’ll do that some day. But for today, this is just my favorite 10 picture books to read, pulled right off of our shelves. If you don’t have one of these, do yourself a favor and get on the library or amazon app right now and order it. Happy Reading.