Recommended reading list for children

[RomanGoddess]

This is a spin-off question on the Montessori recommended reading list thread. That thread recommends books that parents can read about the Montessori Method.

I would like a recommended reading list for children. Can others give me names of books that their 2, 3 and 4 year old children have on their shelves in their Montessori home or school? Obviously I am thinking that the focus is more on realistic books (and let's not get into that debate again) but which ones? Most of the books I find for toddlers and preschoolers in the store are cartoon type ones.

Thanks!

[mehndi mama]

We're constantly getting the Helen Oxbury board books from the library - Friends, Shopping, Dressing, Family.....there are a whole bunch of them, featuring a baby or toddler doing something with the item/person/animal that is referred to. Only one word per page. The pictures are drawings, not photos, but they portray the baby/toddler in a natural attitude, which I LOVE.

Not sure if this fits in with Montessori, but we also love David Shannon's Baby David board books - Oh David!, David Smells, and Oops! The drawings aren't entirely realistic - they're stylized to look like a small child's drawing - but they're certainly relevant to the toddler's everyday life!

[Lillianna]

Here are some of the authors and books that we love:

Satomi Ichikawa: "Bravo Tanya" and "Dance, Tanya": http://www.alibris.com/search/books/...kawa,%20Satomi

Ludwig Bemelmans: Madeline Series http://us.penguingroup.com/static/pa...deline/bio.htm

Tomi DaPaola esp. "The Art Lesson" and "Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs": http://www.tomie.com/main.html, http://www.childrenslit.com/f_depaola.html

Rachel Isadora, wonderful illustrations: http://www.harpercollinschildrens.co...aspx?CId=17066

Ronald Heuninck, "A New Day" and "Playtime" have really nice, realistic illustrations but no text! You and your child can create your own storyline: http://www.amazon.com/Playtime-Ronal.../dp/0863151248

We also love the 'Stopwatch books' by Silver Burdett Press: esp "Strawberry": http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sear...82098013&nsa=1

We also have a couple unicef books: esp. "Children like me": http://www.alibris.com/search/books/author/UNICEF

"Baby Animal Stories" by Derek Hall. http://www.amazon.ca/s?ie=UTF8&searc...%20Hall&page=1

"My first Book" by Jane Belk Moncure has one word on each page to go with the illustration: http://www.janebelkmoncure.com/

Priddy Bicknell esp. "Happy Baby Colors" and "Happy Baby Words" use photographs of real babies and objects: http://www.alibris.com/search/books/...riddy,%20Roger

Aline D. Wolf also has a great number of quality books: http://www.parentchildpress.com/index.html

I will post more as I think of them!

[mightymoo]

In the realm of realistic, I bought a great series from scholastic last spring which was all about nature that DD loved. One of the books is "Egg to Robin" - its simple statements like 'A robin makes a nest', 'the robin lays an egg', etc. with nice pictures. I can't remember them all, but they were all nature in theme, Seed to plant, tadpole to frog, etc. DD really loved them, especially since at the time we had a robins nest in our front yard we could peer into and watch the baby robins grow up.

My mom (former K teacher) gave DD the 'froggy' books, they are all about various life events, "Froggy plays soccer" "Froggy goes swimming" and DD loved those.

[Lillianna]

I forgot to mention these well-loved books:
One is a hand-made book that my Aunt made for her 1st birthday. It is a great book about my dd and her favorite thing: dancing!
The other is any photo album and especially a few small photo albums we put together for her that tell stories, for example there is one for each year of her life and there is a "birthdays" book and one with pictures of her with her cousins and good friends.