Counting Kisses by Karen Katz (2001)

Our new favorite bedtime book. It starts with a tired baby who is in need of a kiss. I love this book not only because it gives my son the needed quiet transition from play to bedtime but also how it teaches counting and identifying body parts - tiny toes, wriggly feet, yummy knees, pretty belly button, dimpled chin, itty bitty nose, baby hands, sweet little ears, closing eyes, and dreamy head.

And now it's time for baby's bed...

Anton Lee's top 12 board book picks!

My son recently turned one year and one month and he’s ready to have a change in his reading materials. Before we shelve these books, here’s a rundown of his favourite ones in his first year:

1. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star / Old MacDonald had a Farm / Wheels on the Bus

I’ve been reading to my son since he was in utero but I can say that these three spin-a-song board books firmly started my son’s reading adventure at 2.5 months. He would be alert and focused every time we start reading to him these books.  All three books are beautifully, brightly coloured and sceneries change by spinning the wheels on the right hand side of the books.  Happy singing!

 2.       My Little Noisy Book of Ducklings / Kittens /Puppies (2008)
These interactive board books have buttons which when pressed, make quite realistic sounds of a duck, kitten and a puppy!  By 9 months, my son knew when to make the animals quack, meow, or go woof-woof! Not only entertaining but helps babies’ motor skills too!

 

 

 

3.       Oh Baby, Go Baby! (2004)

An adaptation from Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”, this pop-up book has fluff, foil,  banners flapping, and even has a lever to set the baby off  on his adventures! We loved this so much, we decided to use the book as the theme for my son’s first birthday party.

4.       Bedtime Bugs by David A. Carter (1998)
This pop-up book started us on the path of having a “bedtime book” to signal lights off when we  close the last page.  The bugs play a bit, they have a bath, and then a little song. This pop-up book even has a lullabug within the book of the pop-up book!

5.       Goodnight, Thumper by Disney Bunnies (2007)
When my son started having fun pulling the flaps in Bedtime Bugs, we felt it was time to change his bedtime book.  Goodnight, Thumper, a board book (no flaps, Mommy!), has provided us hilarious moments before falling asleep.

 

  

6.       Otis Loves to Play by Loren Long (2012)

Otis is a tractor who loves playing with his farm friends -- the duck, the calf, and the horse.  Otis is a very active tractor who can zoom and even do handstands! This board book has shown us how we can extend reading into play.  My son loves playing now ring around the rosy (and falling down!).

 

 

 

7.       Touch and Feel Baby Animals by Nadeem Zaidi (2011)

A Baby Einstein book, this hard book has different textures to interest your baby.  There’s the chick’s fluffy down; the puppy’s soft, long ears; the kitten’s soft, orange fur; the turtle’s smooth, hard shell; and the hedgehog’s brown quills!  

8.       Peekaboo, Baby! by Susan Amerikaner (2009)
This is another Baby Einstein board book with flaps which we still love. It teaches the baby not only to play peek-a-book but also positional concepts – behind, underneath, in, and beside.

9.       Say Boo! By Lynda Graham-Barber (2002)

This board book is so fun! We do sounds of the cow, the owl, and the dove.  Around Halloween time, like Ben the Ghost, my son and I started to practice to say “Boo!” And like the bat in the book, I got amazed when I finally heard my son say “Boo!” in his Ben the Ghost costume.

 

 

 

10.   Chicka Chicka ABC by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault (2009)

All the letters of the alphabet clamber up the coconut tree! Will there be enough room? We’ll find out that all the alphabets fell off the coconut tree. Oh no (this is the part wherein my son puts his hands over his ears and shakes his head)!!! This board book vividly shows the letters of the alphabet both in upper and lower cases.

11.   The Real Mother Goose Board Book (1998)
This board book will develop reading endurance (on Mommy’s/Daddy’s part).  It has 15 popular nursery rhymes which include Humpty Dumpty, The Cat and the Fiddle, and The Mouse and the Clock. Try to imagine your baby asking you to read this book to him three times before going to bed.

12.   Baby Animals (2010)
I had doubts at first with this board book as the pictures looked cluttered on the pages. My son, however, loved this the moment we started reading it.  The animals are arranged alphabetically and the name of the baby the animal is identified on each page (example: A is for angelfish. A baby angelfish is called a fry.).  This is a book we can grow up with.  As my son’s attention span increases, we can move on to reading other information about these animals such as where we can find them.  As of now, we are doing the letters, the animals, and the name of their babies. 

We also enjoy the information we’re picking up from this book. Do you know that a baby monkey is called an infant and a baby vulture is called a chick?

Goodnight, Thumper by Disney Bunnies (2007)

Thumper’s Rule: If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all. 

Thumper is a rabbit (we found out much later that he came from the Disney film, “Bambi”).  Thumper does not want to sleep.   Everyone is preparing for bed – the mouse, the duckies, the chipmunk, and the squirrel. Then Thumper heard his mama calling and he knew he had to go home.  Papa told a bedtime story. Still, Thumper wouldn’t go to sleep!

Papa and Mama kissed him and Thumper at last went to sleep.

This was our bedtime reading until my son turned one year. We would read several books but our finale would always be “Thumper”. We used to read this lying down but when he became mobile at five months, he would either sit on my lap or move about while I read to him.  When Papa and Mama kiss Thumper, my son would know it was time for bed (but of course not before he got a good dose of tickling when Thumper’s sisters cry, “Thumper! We missed you!”)

You can be sure we never went out of town without bringing Thumper with us.

Ssssshhhhh.

Say Boo by Lynda Graham-Barber (2002)

Ben is a little ghost who still has to be able to say “Boo!” on the eve of Halloween. 

He went to a forest, a meadow, and a long stone bridge, to practice to say “Boo!”.  Ben would encounter an owl, a cow, and a dove who told Ben that ghosts do not say “whoo!”, “moo!”, or “coo!” and that the little ghost must say, “boo!”

My son and I have been reading together this book since he was about seven months old.  It’s a small hard book that’s perfect for little hands. 

There's also a nice little lesson at the end of the story: Practice makes the scariest “boo!”

hope for the flowers by trina paulus (1972)

Trina Paulus’s Hope for the Flowers, is a children’s story; a good children’s story. And like generally a lot of good children’s stories, contains a story for adults as well.

Yellow and Stripes are caterpillars on a ruthless climb up a pillar. No one knows what’s up there and no one particularly knows why they are climbing this pillar. It is not a pleasant sight – caterpillars pushing, kicking, and stepping on each other. It gets more merciless as one comes near the apex. The caterpillars on that side have realized that to be able to get to the top, they have to get rid of certain caterpillars.

Yellow and Stripes have a realization and they start climbing down…

It is easy to look at Hope for the Flowers as a parable of the rat (or rather, a caterpillar) race – people scurrying to get to the top no matter the cost and the emptiness and loneliness of being up there.

If one looks closely enough, there are however, a lot of other ways at looking at the story of Yellow and Stripes. One can see it as a parable of choices – one can opt to climb up, go down, or stay put. One can also treat it as a parable of relationships - committing, letting go, faith, and second chances. Still one can view it as a parable of revolution, a parable of re-invention, or even a parable of disillusionment.

Here’s the thing about very good children’s books. One reads it the first time and understands it one way; one reads it the second time several years after and realizes that there are several dimensions to the same book. Hope for the Flowers is a very good children’s book.

the little prince by antoine de saint-exupery (1943)

Chapters I love best from this book:

Chapter VI
Oh, little prince! Bit by bit I came to understand the secrets of your sad little life . . . For a long time you had found your only entertainment in the quiet pleasure of looking at the sunset. I learned that new detail on the morning of the fourth day, when you said to me:
"I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset now."
"But we must wait," I said.
"Wait? For what?"
"For the sunset. We must wait until it is time."
At first you seemed to be very much surprised. And then you laughed to yourself. You said to me:
"I am always thinking that I am at home!"
Just so. Everybody knows that when it is noon in the United States the sun is setting over France.
If you could fly to France in one minute, you could go straight into the sunset, right from noon. Unfortunately, France is too far away for that. But on your tiny planet, my little prince, all you need do is move your chair a few steps. You can see the day end and the twilight falling whenever you like . . .
"One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"
And a little later you added:
"You know--one loves the sunset, when one is so sad . . ."
"Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"
But the little prince made no reply.

Chapter XXII
"Good morning," said the little prince.
"Good morning", said the railway switchman.
"What do you do here?" the little prince asked.
"I sort out travelers, in bundles of a thousand" , said the switchman. "I send off the trains that carry them: now to the right, now to the left."
And a brilliantly lighted express train shook the switchman's cabin as it rushed by with a roar like thunder.
"They are in a great hurry," said the little prince. "What are they looking for?"
"Not even the locomotive engineer knows that," said the switchman.
And a second brilliantly lighted express thundered by, in the opposite direction.
"Are they coming back already?" demanded the little prince.
"These are not the same ones," said the switchman. "It is an exchange."
"Were they not satisfied where they were?" asked the little prince.
"No one is ever satisfied where he is," said the switchman.
And they heard the roaring thunder of a third brilliantly lighted express.
"Are they pursuing the first travelers?" demanded the little prince.
"They are pursuing nothing at all," said the switchman. "They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes."
"Only the children know what they are looking for," said the little prince. "They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry . . ."
"They are lucky," the switchman said.

the unicorn by marivi v. soliven (1992)

The thing with this mad and frenzied dashing to meet deadlines is that somewhere in between, something happens to that favourite pink-and-purple polka-dotted flannel unicorn we have neglectfully left in the toy closet. And what do we do when suddenly we find out that it has decided to grow a hard and pointed horn?


“ ‘Why should he want a soft old pink-and-purple polka dotted flannel hornless unicorn? He’s said often enough that life is tough. He’s had enough cuddling from me.’

So the unicorn thought of growing up too. She decided to grow a grown-up unicorn horn. Each night as the little-boy-grown-up dreamed his money dreams, the unicorn concentrated on growing up her horn. And as time passed, the hollow in her brow later levelled out, later grew a lump, later grew a point, still later pointed out until it had become a hard and pointed horn.

The unicorn was proud. She said aloud through the closet door one night: ‘It’d all right to let me out tonight little boy, for I’ve grown a horn as hard your own hard life.’

The boy was surprised to hear the unicorn speak. She had always been so soft and meek. But he opened the door anyway and was surprised to see his pink-and-purple polka-dotted flannel friend waving a long, hard, large white horn. The horn was too long to cuddle her close. It was far too hard to nuzzle his nose against. He continued to stare and the unicorn soon realized that the stare was not a happy one.

He had grown too old to love an old toy. And she had grown too hard to be loved by the little boy still inside of him.

Ever so slowly, her hard white horn began to shrink. Down to a lump, down to a hollow and when it was gone, the rest of her followed.

First went her fuzzy ears, and then her brown eyes, and soon the rest of her pink-and-purple polka-dotted flannel body.

Before he knew it, the little-boy-grown-up had nothing but the faintest feel of old flannel left to remind him of his childhood friend.

He never saw her again.”

the velveteen rabbit by margery williams (1975)

The Velveteen Rabbit is the journey of a fat and bunchy rabbit-toy -- whose coat was spotted brown and white, had real thread whiskers, ears lined with pink sateen and stuffed with sawdust -- into being Real.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit”?

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Of course we do not want to be one of those mechanical toys, very superior, looking down upon every one else and full of modern ideas; or those model boats who never miss an opportunity to refer to their rigging in technical terms; or even those jointed wooden lions made by disabled soldiers who should have had broader views but put on airs and pretend they are connected with the Government.

Somewhere along the journey from being a velveteen toy to Real-dom, the Rabbit, however, asks himself, “Of what use was it to be loved and lose one’s beauty and become Real if it all ended like this?” He had just earlier been placed into a sack with old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house. He was shivering a little for he had always been used to sleeping in a proper bed, and by this time his coat had worn so thin and threadbare from hugging that it was no longer any protection to him.

And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby velvet nose and fell to the ground.

But the nursery magic Fairy arrives just in time and the seasons change.


“Autumn passed and Winter, and in the Spring, when the days grew warm and sunny, the Boy went out to play in the wood behind the house. And while he was playing, two rabbits crept out from the bracken and peeped at him. One of them was brown all over, but the other had strange markings under his fur, as though long ago he had been spotted, and the spots still showed through. And about his little soft nose and his round black eyes there was something familiar, so that the Boy thought to himself: ‘Why, he looks just like my old Bunny that was lost when I had scarlet fever!’. But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.”