A friend at work recently had her first child, and I organized a massive book donation that will last the family for years, in lieu of flowers that will wilt after a week. After polling the office to gather everyone's favorites from childhood, I came up with the list below. One buying spree later, I spent the weekend revisiting these old "friends." The Max had an interesting observation that two of my formative books have characters eating and eating and never feeling full (The Tawny, Scrawny Lion, and The Tales People Tell in Mexico). I'd like to extrapolate that to mean that my hunger for life will never be satiated, instead of having a focus on food issues from the cradle.
Here's the list. What are your favorites?
My own favorites:
* Tawny Scrawny Lion
* Sylvester & the Pebble
* Bartholemew and the 500 hats
* Caps for Sale
Other recommendations:
* Very Hungry Caterpillar
* Pat the Bunny
* Goodnight Moon
* Goodnight Gorilla
* Richard Scary
* Curious George
* Babar
* Tikki Tikki Tembo
* Runaway Bunny
* Mama, Do You Love Me!
* Is Your Mama a Llama?
* Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?
* The Giving Tree
* Where the wild things are
* Harold and the Purple Crayon
* Frances and Jam
* Just a Little Critter Collection
* Barnyard Dance
* Winnie the Pooh
* There's a Nightmare in my Closet
* The Red Balloon
* Pretzel the hot dog
* Moo, ba, fa la la
* Snoozers
* Time for Bed
* Dinosaur's Binkit
* Badly Drawn Dog
* I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew
* Rainbow Goblins
* Chica-Chicka-Boom-Boom
What about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? Or Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day?
My favorite book to read to small children was always The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas. My son learned to say "pneumatic drill" at the age of one and a half from hearing that book.