Ava’s building quite a little library for herself. She must have close to 100 books already, and she can’t even read on her own. A lot of her books are ones that I had when I was a kid. Where the Wild Things Are. The Giving Tree. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Blueberries for Sal. The Story About Ping. And lots more. Some are books that Leah enjoyed, like Pat the Bunny, the Frog and Toad books, and The Velveteen Rabbit (I loved this book too).
Others are books that just weren’t around when Leah and I were kids. Some of Ava’s early favorites were her Sandra Boynton books, which I have to admit are very cute and a lot of fun to read aloud. She also loves her Mouse’s First Summer book, which chronicles the adventures of two mice — Mouse and Minka — as they explore all there is to see on a beautiful summer day. Finally, Ten Little Ladybugs is a book Ava really enjoys reading along with as we count down the missing ladybugs (spoiler: they’re all OK at the end of the book).
Ava’s friend Mac came over not too long ago toting a huge Richard Scarry book that depicted a bunch of cats, dogs, mice, and foxes driving around in construction equipment. Mac, being a boy, went crazy over all the different machines, and he knows the names of almost all of them. I’d almost completely forgotten about Richard Scarry, but a couple minutes spent flipping through this book with Mac brought his genius right back to mind. I was eager to get Ava a book that so perfectly combined words and colors and animals and objects in such a magnificent way. So today I ordered her The Best Word Book Ever. Ava already knows lots of words (she called me “dude” today; I abide). But she gets a lot of stimulation from attaching words to pictures and from naming things.
Leah and I are hoping Ava falls in love with reading the way we did. She’s started to ask us to read to her at other times than bedtime, and she’ll go into her room and get the books she wants to read, but she hasn’t really started taking them off the shelf to look through by herself. I figure this is the next step in her literacy development.
So, which books did you love when you were just starting out? Do tell….