Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
The Nice Dream Truck by Beth Ferry and illustrated by Bridget Barrager (HarperCollins March 2021) is a fictional picture with the fun symbol of an ice cream truck as the deliverer of wonderful dreams. With a natural rhyme and rhythm, the book reads well as a bedtime story or a read aloud and everything in
One book I love for rocking-chair reading is The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper, re-illustrated by Loren Long. My kids also love this one for rocking-chair reading. In fact, when we took the rocking chair out of my oldest son’s room to put into his baby sister’s room, he said, with serious concern,
I Love You, Blankie! by Sheryl Haft and illustrated by Jane Massey (Little, Brown and Company, April 2015) is an adorable board book about a child imagining with a comfort blanket. I never used a comfort blanket myself, but my daughter loves to have a special blankie to snuggle (although she chooses from among a
Are You Sleeping, Little One? by Hans-Christian Schmidt and Cynthia Vance (Abbeville Press, August 2012) shows various illustrated animals in various stages of getting ready for sleep with a soft and gentle rhyme. The repeated words “Are you sleeping?” on each page provided a sense of continuity that my daughter simply loved. I appreciated the fact that
All Kinds of Kisses by Nancy Tafuri (Little, Brown and Company 2011) is a sweet and simple farm animal bedtime book emphasizing the fact that “Little ones love kisses.” Each two-page spread tells the kinds of kisses the little animal loves, and it ends, of course, with the little child being kissed goodnight as well.
Night Knight by Owen Davey (Templar Books, 2011) begins and ends with a boy with a colander as a hat, holding a play horse, but the rest of the illustrations show a different story: a knight coming to the end of his day. The illustrations are playful and fun as the “knight” bathes with the
The Kiss that Missed by David Melling (Barron’s, 2001) is a clever story about a busy father (a king) that didn’t take the time to slow down: and the bedtime kiss he blew to his young son missed, going out into the wild wood where it met with amusing results for the knight he went
Little Owl’s Night by Divya Srinivasan (Viking, 2011) has a basic storyline, that of Little Owl enjoying the evening, watching his forest friends, and wondering why anyone would want to sleep through the beautiful night. He wants to see the sunrise so he can see if that’s any good too, but as his mother describes it to
We have the magical twinkling stars that surround us at bedtime. Bedtime stories are some of my favorite books to read to a sleepy child. They, for the most part, do a wonderful job of getting a child ready to close their own eyes. I like to read the last sentences slowly and quietly myself.
Mitchell’s License by Hallie Durrand and illustrated by Tony Fucille (Candlewick, April 2011) is a fun father-son bedtime book. Mitchell does not want to go to bed, so Dad lets him have a driver’s license, Dad being the “car” as Mitchell perches on his shoulders. This is a true-to-form picture book, meaning the pictures are
From the moment he awakens in the morning, Raisin’s best friends are by his side. They live in Busytown, which is sometimes directly above our house and other times underground, where it snows in April. Goldbug is his best friend (sometimes he is Raisin’s brother), with Huckle, Sally, and Hilda Hippo frequently joining the two
I knew my son (age 3) would love this book as soon as I skimmed through it. Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein (Candlewick, 2010) tells of a father rooster who is trying to tell his daughter chicken some traditional fairy tales, but she keeps interrupting to save the character from the wicked witch, the mean old wolf,
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