Baby Library Must-haves

The Pea has a ton of books! She got them as gifts before she was born, when she was born, and for almost every holiday since. I am pretty much a book hoarder, so I frequently pick her up a book here and there. (Because the 500+ books I have from teaching aren't enough.) You can’t have too many books! She has touch and feel books, lift-the-flap books, ABCs and 123s, color & shape books, rhyming books…you get the idea. But there are a few books that she has always gone back to. Ones that we started reading to her as a newborn and have always had around. She stopped wanting to read them at bedtime for a while, so when my second daughter was born I moved them into her room. I thought that Claire had moved onto other favorites and I wanted to read them to Anna at bedtime. Well Claire did not like that. When she saw them on Anna’s bookshelf, she stacked them up in her arms and took them right back to her bedroom. “Oh! Sorry, Anna! Those are my books,” she said. Who can blame her? So I bit the bullet and bought Anna some of the classic bedtime board books that I feel are absolute must-haves for any baby library. Everyone has their own personal faves, but these are ours for one reason or another:

1)Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown

Look how worn Claire's is! She LOVES this book. It has a lovely kind of cadance that used to lull her to sleep when she was a little baby. It goes through the day at the barn, describing the animals and the noises they make until the sun sets and the animals all go to sleep.

2)Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Classic story. And there's a reason for it. It describes a bear's bedroom through rhyme. Alternating between colorful pictures of the bedroom and back and white pictures of things in the room. You end up saying "Goodnight" to everything in the room, which you could also do in your own child's room. The Pea used to love pointing to the things in the pictures and was particularly interested in the bowl full of mush for some reason.

3)Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann
The only writing in this book is dialogue bubbles which only consists of the zookeeper saying goodnight to the zoo animals. But if you look at the illustrations you will notice that this is a story about a mischievous little gorilla who gets his hands on the zookeeper's keys. It's a great way to talk about the story line with your little one, rather than just reading the words.

4)Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney
I think my husband and I love this book more than my daughter does because of its sentimental value. The Daddy bunny and kid bunny in the story go back and forth telling each other they love the other more. It's endearing and yanks at the heartstrings.

5)I Love You, Good Night by Jon Buller and Susan Schade
It uses simile to tell how much the Mommy mouse loves the kid mouse. "I love you like I love blueberry pancakes. I love you like I love strawberry milkshakes." It's a cute bedtime book that the Pea requests often.

The line-up of bedtime books is always changing in our house, but these ones will always remain special to us!