Favorite Children's Books

I'm linking up with Kelly today for her SUYL on your favorite children's books (granted I'm almost a week late but better late than never!).

I LOVE children's books and my girls both LOVE to read. Right now Ellie is on a Franklin the Turtle and Bernstein Bears kick so I'm definitely NOT going to put them on my favorite books list...I've read them 50 million times in the last month but my girls definitely love them...especially Bernstein Bears.

I'll start with some of our favorite board books.


This book is so cute and is very rhythmic. My girls both really liked this book when they were small babies.

This is actually the only Little Quack book we have but my girls really like it...not quite sure why we've never even read any of the other ones...

Another favorite. I especially love the illustrations...there are hidden animals in all the pictures.

This is a great book for learning words and also for practicing animal sounds.

All of the Sandra Boynton books are great and are quite funny. This was one of Emmie's favorites when she was little.

And of course I had to include this one. My girls both liked Goodnight Moon but especially Emmie. We read this A LOT (and she still goes through phases where she wants to read it).

Now on to some of our other favorites...



Ellie was NOT a book fan for many months of her life but one day she discovered Brown Bear and she's been a reader ever since. For awhile she would only read Brown Bear and then she gradually expanded her repotoire and now loves books. Funny story...we have a new copy and then one from when I was little and they're DIFFERENT. Not.even.kidding. In the old edition it says "mommy mommy what do you see" and in the new edition it says "teacher teacher". In the old one the answer is "beautiful children" and in the new one it is just says "children". Crazy!

This is hands down one of our favorite books. The librarian read this at storytime one week and we checked it out and brought it home and then renewed it over and over and finally I went and bought us our own copy. It's a jungle version of Wheels on the Bus and is sooo cute and the girls love for us to sing it. Ellie will even sing it along with us which is super cute. The illustrations are great and really bright.

This is another library find. It was in the book bin at the end of storytime and I grabbed it because I think it's a beautiful lullaby. This is one that we have checked out many times and really I should probably just buy us our own copy. Both of my girls, but especially Emmie love books where you can sing all the words. This book also has really pretty illustrations.

Anyone who knows Emmie knows that Mousie is her bedtime buddy. Someone (I think Joy Patterson?) gave this to Emmie before she was born along with the mouse. She has slept with the mouse since she was old enough to have a stuffed animal in her crib. We're actually on our second copy of this book because Emmie literally read the pages off of the book! We now have ALL the books in the series and Ellie is quite enamored with If You Give a Pig a Party right now.

If you haven't read this book you must go buy it RIGHT.NOW. It is one of the sweetest children's books out there. I discovered Nancy Tillman books when they were the Kohl's Cares books (which are always great by the way...a book and a stuffed animal for $5 each!). We have all of her books now and they are all great but this one is by far my favorite.

Another book that should be included on every favorite books list! I've always liked this book but after having kids I can barely read it without crying...it's such a sweet book.

This was one that I always liked growing up and I recently dug it out from the back of the bookshelf and read it to Emmie. It's about a little house out in the country and over time the city grows up around the house and the little house is deserted and falling apart and in the end the great-grandaughter of the man who built it finds it and moves it back to the country. I especially love the illustrations...they're very detailed.

And some of our favorite girly books:

How do you not love Fancy Nancy? We were reading this book tonight and Emmie told me that she likes to be fancy. So true! These are just great girly books!

This is by Julie Andrews and her daughter. How do you not love anything that Julie Andrews does? The book is about a little girl who is SURE that she is a fairy princess. It's very cute and there are lots of Very Fairy Princess books.

When Emmie was little my mom got her a High Five subscription. She was probably too young for it when she first got it and wasn't really interested at first but then one day it became her favorite thing. Her favorite part is the Hidden Pictures. It's quite impressive to watch her find the hidden objects! For about 6 or 7 months this was what she picked to read every night at bedtime. I used to hope and pray that she would pick Paul to read her bedtime story...when you only get 1 new magazine a month it means you read the same magazine AT LEAST 30 times...ugh.

I'm sure I left out many of our favorites (I didn't even touch on Dr. Seuss but we're fans and if you haven't read My Many Colored Days I highly recommend it...it's one of the lesser known books but has a great message!) We LOVE books at our house!