Great books for "advanced" young toddlers? - Page 2

[emmaegbert]

Look at the caldecott honor/medal books if you really need more ideas (you've gotten plenty!) IMO you can always abridge an excellent book on the fly, and that is much better than reading a crappy book.

At 2 my son LOVED LOVED LOVED repetition. Same stories over and over, stories with a lot of repetition in them. I did a lot of oral storytelling, particularly of the three billy goats gruff and Jack and the Beanstalk.You can act them out with some little toys or something and then when they know the stories well, it can be a fun thing to do when walking or in the car.

Some oldies but serious goodies that I don't know if are in the lists above:

Caps for Sale

Harry the Dirty Dog

I Went for a Walk in the Forest

Blueberries for Sal

Make Way for Ducklings

My son also loved Owl Babies, I Went Walking, The Erie Canal (by Peter Spier), Each Peach Pear Plum. 

Also just singing! "There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly", "I Had me a Rooster...", "Sing a Song of Sixpence" etc. Lots of tradition nursery rhymes and/or children's songs are fun for kids who are into language.

[starling&diesel]

GREAT responses!  Such fabulous lists! 

I was going to chime in to add that we've just started reading the A. A. Milne books and other chapter books with characters and story lines that capture her interest (E. B. White, selected Dahl, that sort of thing).  She gets three story books at bedtime, then we turn the lights out and read a chapter from a chapter book (with a book light, of course!).  She loves it and it's obviously feeding her brain because she's talking about the story the next day! 

Also, we go to the library a two or three times a week and I get about twenty books each time, choosing based on a quick skim, the quality of the writing and illustrating, the publisher, the author, any award mentions, word from other parents, the amount of words (about a paragraph on each page).  We've found some great books this way, discovering authors that I hadn't known before (and I used to be a book buyer for a children's book store and am a writer for kids!) and also some duds, but at leas this way we're not buying the duds!

Great thread!

(ETA: the book light bit.)

Edited by starling&diesel - 3/12/11 at 12:34pm

[emmaegbert]

we started chapter books with DS when he was about 2 3/4 (in addition to picture books). (Winnie the Pooh, Milly Molly Mandy StoryBook, Finn Family Moomin Troll, Pippi Longstocking, and others). He loved them and we read every night- still do and he's almost 6 1/2. I plan to continue that until he doesn't want to anymore :)