Author: Tanya

When people think of fantasy books for children, they often think of books such as Harry Potter, The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan. These classics are all wonderful books, but I believe that there are other fantasy books that we can start sharing with children at a younger age. Picturebooks have started to offer some incredible pieces of fantasy recently. Why should you read fantasy to children? What can they possibly be learning? Fantasy often works as a metaphor for bigger situations and ideas that a child might be struggling with. It also helps to develop healthy coping skills for bigger emotions.

A lot of early childhood fantasy comes in the form of wordless picturebooks. Wordless picturebooks have a bad reputation because there are no words in them and, as a result, adults don’t know how to read them and often don’t understand the value of them. Well, I am here to explain with a lot of enthusiasm why they are so valuable and why the library I run is filled with them.

In order to read a wordless picturebook, your job as the adult is to simply ask questions. You get to flip the page and ask what they think is happening? Or if they notice anything different on a particular page? It is a completely different kind of reading in the sense that children’s brain activity is literally different because they are trying to problem solve in a whole new way. Hearing words and saying words uses a whole different side of a child’s brain. So while there is a benefit to hearing a story, children get to exercise a whole new brain muscle when they are discussing a story and their theories behind what is happening. Also, allow them to take as much time as they would like looking at each page. Wordless picturebooks often have very complex drawings that are meant to engage the reader into really studying the details in the drawings.

Some of my favorites are:

	Pool by Jihyeon Lee In this book, two children jump into a pool and are surprised by what they find in it.
	Flotsam by David Weisner A young boy finds an underwater camera has the film developed and is surprised by what he finds.
	Journey by Aaron Becker A girl draws a magic door and travels through to find a magical world full of adventures.
	Tuesday by David Weisner This story is about a Tuesday where Frogs get to go on a flying adventure and travel around the town.

As a soon to be mama of a little boy myself, this is a subject that I keep coming back to. The same way toys are marketed separately to boys and girls, there are some books that are specifically marketed to boys and others to girls. As the person that purchases books for our school library, I am used to carefully monitoring the choice of books we are purchasing to make sure we are not spreading negative gender stereotypes even at this young age. I remember reading the book Wringer by Jerry Spinelli and realizing that often the books we read to young boys are about strength and adventure and leave things like empathy and caring out. In fact, Shannon Hale (author of Princess Academy) talks about how when she reads at schools often only the girls are invited to the event. Since it’s a book written by a female author about princesses, clearly boys wouldn’t want to read it? Or would they?

It’s no wonder that our boys often feel that there is a certain mold that they must fit into even at an early age. There seems to be this belief that if a book has a male protagonist everyone can enjoy it (Harry Potter, The Jungle Book, The Graveyard book), but if it has a female protagonist, it is probably only appealing to girls (Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, Ladybug Girl). I argue that this is something we can start to fight back against with the picturebooks we read to our children. As an educator, I want you to know that you can choose books with female protagonists that will appeal to boys and girls equally because a good story is a good story no matter who the protagonist happens to be. Here is a list of some of my favorite picture books with female protagonists and why I think they appeal to both boys and girls:

	Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson This book deals with the idea of excluding someone because they seem different than you. The protagonist learns a lesson in kindness and when she is ready to apologize, the person whose feelings she has been hurting is gone. The idea that sometimes you don’t get to fix your mistakes, but you only get to learn from them is a powerful one.
	Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch In this Munsch classic, Elizabeth, the beautiful princess, loses her clothes, ends up in a paper bag and has to go rescue Ronald. She uses her intelligence to outsmart a dragon and save the day, the best part about this book is that it is really funny.
	Mud Puddle by Robert Munsch Jule Ann wants to stay clean but there is a mud puddle following her around getting her dirty. She tries a few different solutions before figuring out a way to outsmart that mud puddle. The illustrations are wonderful and children especially love seeing as Jule Ann’s dog gets muddy with her.
	The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires The protagonist in this story has a wonderful idea, but it is hard to execute. She must try and try again and fail and fail again. Each time she learns something about what works in her invention and what doesn’t. In the end, she builds something pretty wonderful. This book is a lesson on effort, hard work and has an adorable dog sidekick. Children are often really relieved for her at the end.
	Me…Jane by Patrick McDonnell This book is based on the childhood of Jane Goodall. It is informative, inspiring and about a real person. A woman that goes and lives among monkeys? You don’t need much more than that to get children excited about this book.
	Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett This book is about a girl named Annabelle and her magical box of yarn, which is full of fun and suspense. It also has amazing illustrations of whole houses covered in yarn. It is a hit with young readers partially because covering a city in yarn sounds preposterous and it kind of is, but it’s also pretty lovely when illustrated by Jon Klassen.
	Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems This popular children’s tale is about a girl and her bunny; her Knuffle Bunny. It’s a tale about loving that special stuffed animal and the things that parents will do to help you make sure you have them.
	Rosie Revere Engineer by Andrea Beaty Rosie Revere invents amazing things until she is laughed at, then she stops. It takes a while for her to figure out that laughing at your mistakes is just part of the process. This girl inventor will have you inspired to build all kinds of amazing things.
	Wave by Suzy Lee This wordless picture book about a young girl playing with a wave in the ocean has wonderful illustrations and any child that loves the ocean will love this book as well.
	Sheila Rae the Brave by Kevin Henkes Sheila Rae is incredibly brave until one day she is walking and gets a little lost. Fortunately for her, Louise, her little sister, is there to save the day. Younger siblings especially seem to enjoy this book.

Hopefully, these book suggestions help you think about what books we offer to young boys (and girls) and what messages they communicate to them about who they are and who they should be.

I was recently having a conversation with a parent about how they wanted their child to believe that they can accomplish things. Not that it would come easily to them, but simply that they would view themselves as capable. It was a lovely moment because one of my specific goals as a teacher is that the children in my care have high self-efficacy. The level of self-efficacy is the belief that one is capable of producing a desired or intended result. So, someone with low self-efficacy believes that things just happen to them and they have no control over it, whereas someone with high self-efficacy believes that they are capable of making things happen. Fostering high self-efficacy in early childhood will reap enormous benefits throughout a child’s educational journey.

I work with children under five and one of the ways that I see them struggle is in the very early stages of literacy: writing letters and the beginning stages of reading. In order to release some of the pressure around this process, I make early literacy an organic part of the classroom. Here is a list of my favorite ways that I do this in the classroom that you, as a parent, can do at home:

Read with your child

• I know this one is kind of obvious, but it’s important for them to hear your voice in connection to a book even from early infancy. One of the first goals you should have for them is to connect the writing on the page with the words you are saying out loud. I place my finger underneath the words when reading with a child. Especially with toddlers, if they turn the page before I am done, I stop saying the words and say, ”Oh I need the words to keep going.” I know that we have all memorized the words to Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? But, they don’t know that. To them, when you open a book certain words come out of your mouth and they don’t fully know why, but they know they like it. I usually turn back to the page I was on, point to the next word, and continue.

• As an aside, I do want to note that I highly value picturebooks and think parents move on to chapter books too early. The reason I think that we should point out words is not to move on from picturebooks quickly, but it is just one of the many connections picturebooks provide. The non-profit Room to Read has a great piece about what we lose when we do this here.

Play a clue game

• A clue game is like hangman, but without the murder. We usually play on a whiteboard, but it can be done on a piece of paper as well. Instead of drawing a hangman, I usually draw something along like a flower with many petals for each of their guesses. Whatever you use, there should be no way to lose. I do this in order to celebrate their effort because the point of the game is to simply figure out the word from the clues together and I want to reward them equally whether they gave a correct answer or an incorrect answer so that they learn it is ok to make mistakes.

• For each letter in the word, I will tell them what letter I am looking for. An example would be, I’m looking for a letter that makes and “ah” sound. If they say “o” I will respond by saying, “that makes an “oh” sound but I’m looking for “ah” they kind of sound the same don’t they? Why don’t you guess another letter?” They got it wrong, in other words, they failed in their task but I’m asking them immediately to try again. As adults, we don’t want to let children lose or fail, but they need to know it is ok to fail and more importantly that they are capable of recovering from failure.

• For younger children, I will sometimes start with most of the letters already in the word. For example, we might start with   C  ­        ­    W  ­ and say something like I have a ‘C’ that makes a “kah” sound and ‘W’ that makes “wah” sound now I am looking for a letter that makes an ‘oh’ sound. I know this one sounds very easy, but it is important to give them opportunities to succeed. In addition, some letters make their own sounds and others don’t, so this is not as easy as it looks.

• I usually play this game throughout the day when it comes organically. I will give them clues about what is for lunch, who is coming to visit or where we are going for our walk. There is no specific literacy time because literacy is incorporated throughout the day.

Let them continue stories

• Sometimes, during meals, after we have introduced a new book I’ll hear my students start creating their own adventures for the characters. When that happens, the next day I will set the book up with paper and markers, being careful to match the colors that are prominent in the artwork for the book, and ask them to draw pictures. After they have drawn their pictures, I will have them tell me their story and I will write their words down on a post-it note. If you think they have more to say but have stopped talking I will simply say, “tell me more”. I make a point to not ask leading questions or try to finish their thoughts for them because I want these stories to fully come from them. Don’t think those words are enough? There is a whole book about it, that I recommend.

• After a few times of making our own books, I’ll ask if they as the author would like to sign their book. Then I let them attempt to write their name. It won’t be perfect the first few times and that is ok. Let them take pride in their work and then gently start suggesting some help verbally. Little by little I ask them if they want to write the title or the ending. If they say no I simply say ok maybe next time because it’s not just about learning to write their letters, it’s about learning to love to write. They will write their letters, they might not be the first of their friends to do so but they will get there and what is most important is that they learn to love writing for the joy it brings because that is what is going to keep them motivated in the long run.

Talk about books

• After we finish reading, I will simply ask children what happened in that book? Sometimes they will recount the whole story, but other times they will focus one scene or single detail. Both are just fine. The tempting part is to correct them and direct them towards answers by saying something like, “oh you remember he invited the nightmare in his closet to his bed” but I would argue that serves no benefit other than teaching a child to repeat your answer or interpretation. Instead, let them struggle with what is happening in a story, allow them to work their brains in a way that is difficult as they try and process why the story ended in that specific way. 

• Having nightmares? Moving? Going to the dentist? Feel free to read books about these subjects. The books themselves will be helpful, but do not forget to let your child talk to you about what was in them and let them ask whatever questions they have. Books about specific subjects are meant to be discussed. In fact, after reading a book about a subject your child might have more questions than before and that is great. They are really struggling with big subjects and from the very beginning, you are establishing that they can talk to you about them. You are someone that can be trusted with their most important and difficult questions.

During early childhood, it is especially important to avoid praising children for their abilities, but instead, praise them for their effort. Praising ability communicates that something that doesn’t come naturally is simply something they won’t be good at, and will have a tendency to create a low self-efficacy in your child whenever they try something new that they aren’t good at. This is the idea that things just happen to them. They are good at some things, not good at others, and have no control over which is which. Instead, praising them for their effort teaches them that they do have control over the skills they can learn and even if they were not good at something to start, they can still master that skill if they put the effort in.

With these strategies in mind, you will help your child see themselves as capable of learning to read, understanding stories and writing their own adventures. They will learn to love literacy even if they struggle with literacy concepts at first since you will be supporting them as they try and try again.

It’s tough out there in picturebook world to not notice that a lot of the popular characters are white. You’ve got Madeline, Eloise, Iggy Peck, and Harold. The other difficult piece is that the books that have multi-racial protagonists often have Caucasian authors. Take authors like Rachel Isadora and Ezra Jack Keats who produced picture books that included levels of diversity in their stories that  until then had never been seen before. What does a parent give priority to? My suggestion is that it is a bit of a compromise. Here are some of my tips for choosing picture books that capture diversity:

• Look at the pictures – A book like Jazz baby may not be about diversity, but do you notice something different about the African Americans it portrays? They all have different skin tones. Usually, when a picture book offers characters of African descent they have the same shade of dark skin. It’s important to think about not just if books are showing diversity but how books are showing diversity.
• Look at the author and illustrator – One of my favorite books to read to younger children is Bee- Bim- Bop! By Linda Sue Park. This books has lovely rhythmic language, wonderful illustrations, and can start a conversation about different foods. Christian Robinson has been a favorite illustrator of mine lately. He illustrated the books Gaston and Last Stop on Market Street. He is also an African American. The children in my care know who the authors and illustrators of books are because we talk about it. I want them to know who the people are that write books and that they can look just like them. It’s important that they know that there is diversity in creating the books they read as well as in the books themselves.

• Look at the background – Where do the characters live? What does the street look like? I remember being young and being read A Chair for My Mother. The part of that story that stuck out to me the most? They live in an apartment. Not only do they live in an apartment but it also gets furnished with used things from neighbors and they have to save to buy a chair. It showed me financial diversity that other books hadn’t. Think of how many books have characters that get sent to their room or have a stay-at-home parent? It’s important that children know that there are people that live like them and also that live very differently.

• Look at the protagonist – Is the protagonist male or female? What activities do they like doing? I enjoy sharing books about girls and boys that show different sides than we have to expect in our gender stereotypes. The book Tough Boris is a strong example of that. A fierce looking, tough and frightening pirate man that happens to cry when his parrot dies is alway so fascinating for children to talk about. Try to think about the choices the protagonist makes and ask yourself if these highlight traits that you want to share with your child. It’s important that children see themselves as they are and can be in characters, and not just the common gendered stereotype.

• Look at the source material – One of the biggest shocks for me in my teaching career was to learn that a book such as Brother Eagle, Sister Sky was not a book that I should share with my classes. It says it comes from a speech given by Chief Seattle and the illustrations looked really beautiful. But, when doing further research you can find out that the speech is not accurate and sources on it vary and that the Native American illustrations are wildly inaccurate. Native Americans on the west coast didn’t live in houses that looked like that and dressed in a different manner. If we’re going to try and share about another culture using words from that culture, let’s double and triple check that they are accurate.

With these tips, we can be more aware that our children are exposed to the whole world around them and not just the world immediately around them or the world that is often thought of as normal and typical by the people that publish children’s books.

I’m going to start by referencing my most important rule for sharing a book with your child: make sure you have read it yourself first. Fairy tales, in particular, are the kinds of stories that are going to lead to more questions. Be prepared to have a discussion with your child about what you read and be prepared for your child to want to process some of the things that they just heard. I actually start the discussion about fiction and nonfiction pretty early with the children in my care. When I tell them this book is fiction, they will tell me “it’s not real, but it’s something that came out of someone’s mind.” This will help relieve some of the fears that a child can develop after hearing a frightening story.

Still, fairy tales have value and I plan to read them to my son when he is old enough to be able to enjoy them. Some can be gruesome in their punishments and many have parents that are not kind to their children. But, here are some of the reasons that I love to share fairy tales:

• They help to develop critical thinking. Children can see how many of the results in a story are tied to consequences from the decisions that the characters make earlier in the story.
• They are a great segway to talk about other cultures. Some of our most beloved fairy tales don’t come from the US and, as a result, you can talk with your child about the origin of the story and what influences that might have.
• They allow a child to start seeing that there is good and evil in the world. Of course, the real world is a lot less black and white than the worlds of fairy tales, but it introduces children to the concept that the world has some darkness in it.
• The princesses in these stories are often very clever in order to save themselves. In fact, a lot of the women in written fairy tales are multidimensional in a way that most Disney princesses are not. Fairy tales offer many different views of how women can be rescued besides waiting for a handsome prince. After all, doesn’t Gretel save Hansel and isn’t it the sister who saves her brothers in The Twelve Brothers?

For children under the age of five, I suggest starting with some less gruesome tales. Some of my personal favorites include The Princess and the Pea (by Rachel Isadora),  The Three Robbers  by Tomi Ungerer and Rapunzel by Sarah Gibb.

Picturebooks are currently experiencing somewhat of a renaissance. There are many talented writers and artists that have chosen to focus on this format and as a result, we have incredible writing and illustrations in many different forms and styles . There are illustrators like Oliver Jeffers, Christian Robinson and Suzy Lee that have distinct artistic voices that make beautiful books. There are also talented authors like board book author Belle Yang and the award-winning Sherman Alexie who just put out his first picture book. The choices for what to read with our children are large and the task of choosing what to actually purchase can be a bit daunting. Over the past few years, I have had the pleasure of doing the purchasing for our school’s library and I want to share some questions that help guide my thinking as I decide whether or not to include a book in our collection.

First, let’s start by looking at what picturebooks provide to early readers. Are they just a necessary step between board books and chapter books or are they something more?

Picturebooks serve a more important purpose than you might expect.

• They are an important step to help children become lifelong readers. When you share a picturebook with a child, you are helping them to engage with the book before they are able to read the words.
• This literally brings you and your child closer together as you are physically close whether they are on your lap or right next to you and you are focusing on the same task of interacting with a story.
• While their attention is on the illustration, they are also hearing your words and making connections between the text and pictures. This helps them to learn that words convey meaning before they are aware of the text.

So, picturebooks are important, but how do we choose them?

The most important rule about sharing a book with a child is one that I learned many years ago the hard way:

Always read the book yourself first before sharing it with your child.

I mean always. I once read a book called The Clown of God to a group of kindergarten students at a VBS without reading it first (Spoiler alert: the clown dies while juggling) and after that experience I realized no matter what you think you know by the cover, you actually know nothing about a picturebook until you read it. If you don’t read the book first, you may find yourself having to explain difficult concepts that you are not quite prepared for.

But, as we are reading the book ahead of time, what should we be looking for?

1. When reading through a picturebook, the most important question is: “does this author respect his audience?” There are plenty of authors that write picturebooks because they are popular and they it’s easy (it’s not) because there are much fewer words. All they need to do is string a few words together, make them rhyme and ensure there is a certain obvious moral lesson to be learned. As a general rule, these do not make good picturebooks. Some of the best children’s literature comes from authors that respect children and their abilities to understand abstract concepts and complex plots. Did you know that right before the Harry Potter books came out publishers had decided you could not write longer books for children any more. Maybe it could work for young adults, but children of this generation weren’t capable of staying focused that long so they didn’t want to publish books that were long and complex for children. We all know how that worked out. The truth is J.K. Rowling could have tried to edit her books down and she could have cut out some of the plot lines in order to simplify and design the series for an audience that can’t or won’t focus. Instead, she chose to stick with her vision, knowing that children wanted to be transported into magical worlds and having many different storylines and multi-layered characters would not be beyond children. She inspired a new generation of children, not only to read but to love reading.
2. Are the pictures pleasant to look at? Is it clear that the illustrator put in the effort and thought necessary to create these illustrations? We come to the part where people say, “do not to judge a book by its cover”. To an extent that is true (see earlier anecdote about the Clown of God), but the same way that you want to make sure a writer did their best work with a picturebook, you want to make sure an illustrator took the time to make something beautiful. Remember the way that your child’s brain is working when looking at picturebooks is that they are literally using the pictures to make connections, solve problems and follow along with the plot. They are literally reading the illustrations. Some people look at illustrating for children and think bright primary colors are all that you need. However, this is not the case. Think of an example like “Where the Wild Thing Are.” It is a book that really uses its illustrations to guide the story and the art is incredibly detailed and clearly something that was worked on for a long time. The illustrator thought that the reader was worthy of their best work.
3. Is the length appropriate for the age group? What about the vocabulary? Think of conversations that you have had with your child or the children in your care. Don’t get me wrong, even Dr. Seuss snuck in a few complex words to his books. But, this was purposeful with the intention of teaching some vocabulary (after all, one of Dr. Seuss’ great contributions to literature is creating readers that children enjoyed and moving the U.S. on from the Jane and Dick books). A few words that you get to explain and talk about are not a big deal, but if the book is about potty training and it is a chapter book, go ahead and move on. Clearly, there was very little thought put into the developmental stage the reader would be in when dealing with this issue.

If you keep these questions in mind ,the books you choose to share with your child you should feel more comfortable and you should be less overwhelmed when you go to Amazon or a bookstore and see all your choices. I leave you with one of my favorite quotes about reading in childhood. It comes from the movie You’ve Got Mail. I know it’s cheesy, but this quote, the lovely bookstore and this quick interaction in this scene (from 2:43-2:51) about the worth of a book make me love it so:

“When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does. (Kathleen Kelly,  You’ve Got Mail)

Welcome to Bookish Baby! My name is Tanya and I have been working in early education for over a decade. One of my favorite parts of teaching is seeing children ages 0-5 learn to love stories. As an early educator, I have become passionate about providing high quality, respectful books for the children in my care to explore. I created this website as I completed my Masters in Education from Penn State with a focus on children’s literature because having been exposed to so many different ideas about the importance of quality children’s literature throughout my program, I decided to create a space to share this information with parents and caregivers. With so many different books to buy for our children, it’s important that we are intentional about how we choose the books for them to consume.