Children's Book Recommendations
Perhaps you and your progeny would enjoy some of these, part one
We (me, baby, Owen Jr., and dog) released our first children’s book last year, ‘Rover In Church’. As I am presently in the process of introducing myself to Substack (hello), I thought I should reopen a special file.
People often ask me for kids' book recommendations. So aside from... mine... here is a window into the kids' book vibe at the Cyclops hut.
I think people often ask me out of a sense that they would like some alternative to what they typically find available today. So, brief note at the outset, Lady Cyclops is somewhat of a childhood aesthetic extremist: wood toys, old books, natural materials, no screens, all that.
That's my inclination as well, clearly - but she also grew up that way. I don't give parenting advice or tell people what to do ever, but that's the perspective this list will be coming from. Most, if not all these, are older. You'd probably have to find them online.
Let's do it.
First: Katy and the Big Snow.
This is the ur-text. A tractor saves the day. I think Owen Jr. has talked about tractors every day since reading this book.
Keywords: town, jobs, work, highway department vehicles.
Picture vibe: very 1940s, see cover.
We have it as a board book.
Corgiville Fair.
Tasha Tudor, classic. A bunch of corgis have a town in New England where they have a fair. Also, there are trolls and rabbits. Traditional Americana vibes.
Painted watercolor images. Dogs doing stuff. This is pretty long, often having blocks of text on each page.
Here’s ‘A Time to Keep’ - also by Tasha Tudor. This book is all about holidays, it goes through each month. Solid “rhythm of the year” book. The vibe is what you see on the cover. It has a “traditional America” edge.
Extremely wholesome: a little kid can really inhabit this kind of book. We keep it out on the shelf year round.
We’ll just get all the Tasha Tudor books out of the way here. Below, these are kind of like books you might find at your grandmother's house, in a good way. I think their quiet unobtrusive nature is conducive to quietly reading with a child. Naturally and effortlessly hyper wholesome.
Do you like the pumpkin here by the way? You can tell I was thinking: I’m taking nice pictures for the internet. What would give people a real warm home feeling? Of course. A pumpkin. They’ll love it. He’s a good pumpkin. Nice little visual flair.
This is more naturally my department:
The Shakers (famous no sex having fringe Christian weirdos) (love it) did a lot of kids' education, as they took in a lot of kids. This is an illustrated version of a poem they would use to teach the alphabet. Five stars. Ten stars. This book is great. If you’re here reading this, just get this book.
Reading wise, it’s like a stepped up ABC book. The text is about one hundred animal names arranged into a poem.
Gear change: Blueberries for Sal.
1940s. A kid goes blueberry picking. There are bears involved. This one is very well illustrated—it has that 1940s almost silkscreened pen and ink look. Set in Maine (?). Often listed in top 100 children’s literature… lists. Can't go wrong here.
I deployed this one in the “kid can't talk yet but likes books” era. Same illustrator as ‘Go Dog, Go’. Honestly, I love this book. Probably read this 4000 times and it didn’t really get old. I have the board book, the paper one might be different. This one was a staple. It's great.
I'm keeping well known classics off the list, but if you don't have any Richard Scarry books, you can get this. It's huge - might be like 300 pages. Supposedly it’s his personal favorites. It stretches from the classic old school style to the later style most people know him for.
Likewise, everyone knows Dr. Seuss. If you have nothing, this above book is my favorite collection.
On the other end, can I quickly flex my esoteric Dr. Seuss? ‘King’s Stilts’ is his second (?) book (long, really an illustrated book). I also have these two collections of “lost” stories, mostly as an oddity. To be clear, I wouldn’t call these kid’s books, they’re just interesting:
I'm unsure how well known this book is, but on this brief detour: this is a book by Dr. Seuss, but it's illustrated by Quentin Blake, a well known but totally separate illustrator (BFG, etc.). Just a cool rare overlap some may find interesting.
This above book is great. Our copy is massive (compare to pumpkin) (he is still holding it down).
Vibe is extremely 1970s, someone telling you about life on the farm month to month, all the animals, how they live, what they do: work, crops, the seasons. This one is really solid - I’d be very surprised if anyone regretted obtaining this.
This is definitely the strangest book on the list. Can't really explain it. 1980s.
Keywords: minimal text, dreamlike, symbolism, twilight… uh, even… vaporwave (?). If you are here in and around this internet sphere you’d probably think this is very cool. Five stars.
Somehow the vibe of the above book and this next one are slightly related:
We never do straight “counting” books (that’s just part of our pedagogy style) but this is… close to that. Bizarre hyper-symbolic counting puzzler… thing… number, quest… through detailed English garden mandala labyrinths? It is something like that.
This book is unique. It's kind of a kinetic book: you touch the dots of paint, then turn the page to mix them (as an example). Owen Jr. went insane for this one. He enjoyed pressing and poking it so much he destroyed it and we had to get another one. His little sister (1) destroyed the next one and still brings the split halves to me and begs me to read them. Ad or warning, your call.
Wife files:
“This is a really sweet story about mice who live in a place called Brambly Hedge that was based off the author studying real hedge rows in England. It’s a series and there’s one for each season.”
We’re reading the summer one right now as it’s summer (it’s just called ‘Summer Story”), the kids really enjoy it. Here’s an image from it if you’d like to see part of the vibe:
This fairy one is a separate series, also one for each season (1920s?).
Some of you would love this above book. The local church has their golden Eucharist chalice stolen by trolls, so this kid goes on a folk-tale style quest to get it back. If that sounds enticing to you, this book is for you. Scandinavian vibes. Five stars.
The images in my book, which you can fine here, if you’re interested, were heavily influenced by the children’s books vibe in my house and reading all these with Owen Jr. before I made it. It would hopefully fit in with all this stuff on a shelf.
Thus concludes part one. Soon… part two.
Some really lovely books in here! Thank you for sharing. I've been fortunate to stumble upon a 2 book set of Tasha Tudor illustrated The Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm.