If there is a baby in your life, you must make sure they have these books on their shelves. These are our absolute favorites over the last year because they’re fun to read (over and over and over again), educational, and feature a diverse characters.
Atinuke and Angela Brooksbank’s Baby Goes to Market tells about a day when Baby goes shoppign with its Mama. During the trip, vendors share their goods with Baby, who eats a bit of each before adding the rest to Mama’s basket without her knowing. We love that this book connects a different experience of buying food from what we know, as well as concepts of math and the idea of generosity. I love the expressions on Baby and Mama’s faces, especially when Mama realizes Baby has been adding to her basket!
Readers can really feel the joy in Salsa Lullaby by Jen Arena and Erika Meza. Mami, Papi, and Baby all do a salsa bedtime dance to help Baby relax before bedtime. The rhythm and rhyme really add to the listening experience! My kids love to see the dog joining in, the beautiful flowers showing the flow of the music, and the way the family all sends baby to sleep with such sweet dreams.
Janik Coat’s Hippopposites is a simple and fun way to introduce young kids to the concept of opposites. The hippos are delightfully large and round, and the high contrasts in the images and textures used help even very young readers understand. Honestly I was really struggling to explain what opposites are to my 3 year old after her preschool said that she struggled to identify them. A few times through this book and we’re making progress!
Noisy Crow and Ingela P. Arrhenius’s Where’s the Astronaut? is best for young babies. It’s a super cute lift-the-flap book. Bonus- the flaps are felt! Baby will find all kinds of space friends, including a female engineer and a space dog friend. The last page is a mirror, which is always a big hit with babies.
Divya Srinivasan’s Little Owl’s Night follows Little Owl’s journey one evening to say hello to his friends. At the end of the night Owl returns home and ask his mother to tell him how night ends. As she tells a beautiful story of night fading to morning, Little Owl falls asleep. Every time I read this story, I hope my kids, like Little Owl, will fall asleep before the end. Shocker- it never happens, but we love it anyway.
The Once-Upon-A-World series has taken classic fairy tales and adapted them to feature characters and cultures that are non-Eurocentric. My kids love these stories, and they have led to conversations about how previous versions we have read have exclusively featured white characters. I also like to point out some of the patriarchal aspects as conversation points, like when Sleeping Beauty is kissed without permission or the princesses all fall in love with men. While there is more work we can do to make these stories more reflective of our world, this is an excellent start. Shown here are Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, and The Little Mermaid.
If you choose to purchase anything from the links above via my Bookstore shop, I’ll make a small commission. Thanks in advance! Comment below if you pick any of these up for the kids in your life!