A friend asked last night which children’s book authors I’d recommend for their expanding library. Specifically, she wanted stuff without too many words and lovely pictures, which rules out the beloved Frances series and William Steig (love love Doctor Desoto).

But we can provide a list. Here goes.
I complied all of the below titles (and toys) here at Amazon- you can even shop through us!

Byron Barton makes great graphically illustrated books. Rosy loves Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs.
Taro Gomi is one of our all-time favorites. Especially My Friends and Bus Stops.
Anything by Peter McCarty is beautiful and simply worded.
Rosemary Wells. The Yoko books are some of our favorites.
The Ella books by Carmela D’Amico are a bit more involved, but still simple and sweet.
The Blue Kangaroo series by Emma Clark
The classics by Maurice Sendak- Wild Things, the Night Kitchen, the Nutshell Kids. We love them all.
Vera B. Williams and Julie Vivas are my other favorites.

Graduating from pure picture books, our favorites have been:
The Little Bear series by Else Minarik
Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad series, and Mouse Tales.
For old classics, I love Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson, and Robert McCloskey.
And for Sophie, the Angelina Ballerina series continues to resonate.They’re short enough that I don’t mind wading through them night after night.

We are bringing some books to the boat, storing some more, and will be relying heavily on libraries along the way. Our toy collection has also been pared down to the select special things and costumes. The most popular toy in our collection, hands down, has been the Haba doctor kit (at far left in the picture). We had a plastic one but after the crazy toxic plastic scare a while back, I tried to replace our best things with “better” versions. The Haba kit is a little collection of vials and bottles with cork tops. Nothing like the American kits with blood pressure cuffs and such. But it gets played with every day. They love it. We recently added some elastic and triangle bandages, and a real stethoscope (so cheap!) and it’s gained a new lifespan.

Their other favorite? The dragon. We have read and listened to Puff the Magic Dragon dozens of times over the past few weeks. Rosy calls any lizard or crocodile she sees a dragon- today we visited the pet store and she almost fainted at the sight of the iguanas in the glass boxes- “DRAGONS!! BABEEEE DRAGONS!!!!”

Happy reading, and playing!

This week on Lovely Monday we love-

All the crazy smelling soaps in the house. My friend Chris borught me one that smells like a Christmas Tree. My friend KSue makes her own soap and inhabits the shower with her lemon/eucalytpus, as well as the dining room table with her clove-scented hand sanitizer (all natural and my kids are ADDICTED). Go get some. The soaps look particularly nice all felted up.

I am also addicted to the new Seventh Generation dish soap (clementine/lemongrass) and laundry soap (eucalyptus/lavendar) frangrances. Seriously good work, you natural chemists. Burt’s Bees diaper creme has made the list. I’ve tried every butt paste on the shelf in my 4 years of diapering. This stuff really works, and smells awesome.

Lanterns! How something so simple and quick to make can be so beautiful . . . I love them. Watered down Elmers and tissue paper on Mason jars. We stuck IKEA votives inside and they burn for days. When the tops get too black, we just make more.

Sunrises. Thank you, Rosy, for getting me up in time to see this. These cold days have been incredible. Winter light is magic light. Whether it’s at your table, or at 7am in the sky.