kids' books - SEARCH and DESTROY

The Amazon reviews for it are hilarious. Xpost

He whispers it. It's like a compulsion. Let it go, Big Nutbrown Hare.

Love You Forever is so creeeeeepy. When the boy grows up and moves out his mother drives over to his house with a ladder and climbs into his bedroom window and crawls across the floor to get to the kid (who is now a grown adult).

I've been enjoying David Wiesner's books a lot, he's in the Chris Van Allsburg school of luxuriously illustrated fantastic weirdness but less wordy, some of them have no words at all.

I do like to read Guess How Much I Love You because I like doing the voices for the Nutbrown Hares. I like reading Barnyard Dance despite my Boynton misgivings, too, because it's just fun as heck. Also "Stand with the donkey" always tickles me. Hipster donkey, too cool to dance.

our 3 yr old was making me read him 'engineer ari and the hanukkah mishap' every night for awhile. he's taken to calling pennies 'maccabean coins'.

Search: anything at all by Julia Donaldson, but particularly The Highway Rat, which is a work of genius.

Also, having read this I urgently need to buy This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen.

I Love You Forever - what the fuck this is the creepiest fucking book ever. (not a board book, or at least not the version we have, but still it's terrible.)

Haha yes, it's shocking. We got it as a "gift" (changed the locks obv)

The Snowy Day

cosine, this book rules

my kids were super into YOU CHOOSE for awhile and i was concerned that it was encouraging an acquisitive, window-shopping view of the world

but i think on balance it was good: a brief moment where they could pretend that they actually had control over what the hell was happening to them

I Love You Forever

Haha, I don't have kids but I came here to post DESTROY: I Love You Forever. I worked at a Waldenbooks in college and we couldn't keep this book in stock, it sold constantly and the people who bought it always made it a point to tell me how much they loved it while they were checking out. It's seriously the creepiest piece of shit book ever.

so close to a solid idea for a good albeit mawkish and depressing book though. I'm not sure what the audience for that book is, I suspect it's for grandmothers.

An excerpt from my favorite Amazon review of I Love You Forever:

Anyone who's had a baby in their family knows there's nothing cuter than looking at them while they're sleeping. The mother in the book knows this and sneaks into his room at night to peek at her angel, and sing her little song to him. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Only it doesn't stop there. When the boy is a teenager she CRAWLS into his room on all fours and, "If he was really asleep she picked up that great big boy and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth" while she sang her song. I don't know about you but if I was 15 and woke up in my bed with my Mom holding me like that, I'd probably scream. Who knows what kind of weird dreams this poor boy was having?

Well at least when this poor lad moves out of the house, he won't have to deal with his mother's obsessive habits anymore...or does he? Yep, once he's full grown, according to the book, "...sometimes on dark nights his mother got into her car and drove across town." YIKES! Not only is that scarier than hell that she's driving with a ladder strapped to her car in the middle of the night, but she makes a regular habit of it.

Yep, ol' Mommy climbs up his house, crawls through his window and does the same thing. Man this guy sleeps better than anyone I've ever known! Well, you can see by looking at this small single bed that he never got married. And he had such a healthy upbringing, too. It's a shame!

Though the book takes a poignant dramatic turn when he hears his mother isn't doing well and he goes to visit her. As he holds his dying mother in his lap, he turns the tables and sings the song to her. But wait a minute! I thought he was asleep during all those other times. Looks like he was playing along with this little sick little game a little too eagerly.

At this point, you feel bad for making fun of the book at all 'cause his mother has passed away. The son returns home, though, and picks up his baby girl and sings the song to her.

But from everything we've seen in the book, the guy lives alone. The only woman he ever sees at night is his Mom. Leaving the only possible mother of his child to be...OH MY GOD!!!

Not true that "from everything we've seen in the book, the guy lives alone". In the pic where his mother calls to say she's dying he is preparing what looks like dinner for two and there are two mugs sitting on the counter.

I think The Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of the world's perfect works of literature.

However I cannot fucking stand Horton Hatches the Egg, which my 2-year-old sums up as "Horton Hatches the Egg. And he sat, and he sat, and he sat, and he sat, and he sat, and he sat, and he sat. The end."

Search This is Not My Hat, We Are In A Book, Knuffle Bunny

those elephant and piggie books are fun to read bc they're swift and allow for good playacting.

I said it upthread but Mo Willems is insanely consistent, all his books are funny and great and there are like a thousand of them.

this is a good one:

http://www.amazon.com/Steam-Train-Sherri-Duskey-Rinker/dp/1452109206

Good Night Gorilla - LOL

Yeah, this is ace!

We love Good Night Gorilla too.
The Escape of Marvin the Ape is another really good gorilla book. Beautiful & engaging art, really silly story.
Mo Willems & Jon Klassen get much respect at bedtime.

still my fave:

http://mybloogle.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/6166877495_7a1772fef9_z.jpg

https://www.lostmy.name/products/lostmy-name?utf8=%E2%9C%93&name=Ivy&gender=girl

I haven't ordered one yet, but I really like this book. Customizable!

Children’s Stories Made Horrific: Love You Forever - http://the-toast.net/2014/09/18/love-forever/

Jesus, now I feel like a heel for hating this book - http://robertmunsch.com/book/love-you-forever

Sad story. Still a bad book.

my 2 year old is obsessed with the poky little puppy, and i think it is a terrible boring book. obviously i don't tell him this and i read it to him whenever he asks, though i do admit to hiding it sometimes to get him to read other books

are there any halfway decent/not terrible comic books appropriate for a 5 1/2 year old? my daughter loves batman and wonder woman, but a lot of the stuff I've picked up hasn't really been quite right. there are some kids books at the library but they aren't actually comic books.

do what I did and get a bunch of Silver Age stuff. More recent stuff is gonna hit or miss, although DC puts out decent kids comics (Superman Family Adventures, I think it's called, plus Batman Brave and the Bold although that might have ended). The book that sold my daughter on comics was, oddly, Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman when she was around 4 iirc. But Silver Age stuff is the way to go - Superman, Kirby etc.

I bought Ivy a graphic novelization of A Wrinkle In Time, which is too old for 5 1/2 (or 16 months for that matter) but it's out there. And I bought her the actual book when she was like two months old so I'm getting closer to age-appropriate.

What about non-super hero stuff?

Asterix + Tintin tyler

we got V a Tintin book (apparently one of the crappier ones) and it was a) pretty violent and b) chock-full of ethnic stereotypes

(she didn't care for it)

Comic books for 5-6 year olds?

It depends what they are into I'd say that Tintin and Asterix are no good as they are for older children and yeah, really old fashioned.

Baby Mouse (19 books and counting) by Matt and Jennifer Holm
Squish (5 books and counting) also by the Holms
Johnny Boo (there's about 5 of them) by James Kochalka
Dragon Puncher/Dragon Puncher Island - James Kochalka - hilarious
Comics Squad Recess! - a compliation with the Holms, Dav Pilkey and others
The Flying Beaver Brothers books by Maxwell Eaton
Ottos Orange Day/Ottos Backwards Day by Frank Cammuso and Jay Lynch
^ Those are published by Toon Books who do tons of great comic books for ages 4-8. Defintely check them out.
Captain Underpants obviously though it's not really a comic book but Super Diaper Baby is and lots of others by Dav Pilkey.

There's old favs like the Smurfs and Garfield who have newer, more modern comic books for younger kids. Theres a killer Wizard of Oz series but probably for older kids.

I have others which I can't remember right now. My children are voracious comic book readers. Our central library has a huge selection so we just go and get about 20 every week.

thanks y'all!
yeah i liked tintin when i was a kid, but maybe a little older... they are umm problematic aren't they? beautiful to look at though.

See also Nobrow's kid's comics: http://www.nobrow.net/category/products/comic-graphic?producttag=childrens-books

They also do some really nice kids picture books.

BTW, Mr Men books are really boring to read as an adult. I remember being obsessed by them as a kid, and Ella loves them, but they do not stand up well.

The Art Spiegelman-edited collection of classic American children's comics is one of the greatest anthologies of all time:

http://www.abramsbooks.com/Books/The_TOON_Treasury_of_Classic_Children_s_Comics-9780810957305.html

Ivy's new favorite book is Chu's Day by Neil Gaiman, which I impulse bought at TJ Maxx for like $4.50. She runs to her bookshelf saying, "Ah choo ah choo ah choo," grabs the book, and brings it to us. When we read it, she sneezes along with Chu and then kisses him goodnight at the end of the book.

So, search: Chu's Day by Neil Gaiman. The illustrations are fantastic, too. Lots of weird detail in them.

There's a second one, too, 'Chu's First Day at School', which Ella loves

Almost anything by Mercer Mayer is k-classic.

Anyone got a good book that teaches the value of apologies? Got a precocious preschooler who would rather pretend to faint than apologize for anything.

Mercer Mayer's "I'm Sorry

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/618W5M4AQML._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

which also specifically gets at how apologies don't mean much if you don't follow through on them

Cool! We haven't delved into Mercer Mayer yet, either.

love his style, kind of too prolific for his own good, almost makes it hard to pick out the "best".

also after someone pointed this out to me I can't unsee it:
http://i.imgur.com/Zfj3x7S.jpg

"I dress myself!"

El Deafo by Cece Bell is a wonderful graphic novel for children ages 6-12 (imo). It's an autobiographical story about a little deaf girl/bunny. Great gift idea.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQkhVoKUcAAKqss.jpg

my daughter *loves* that book