board books

This is our most treasured bedtime book. At a very early age, we settled on this as our nightly bedtime book, before our little one was old enough to want variety (and lengthier books). We've all three memorized it by now, so we can also recite it in the dark if little one wants it (and sometimes our 2yo does request this when requesting songs after lights out). The thing we always liked is the ability to "act out" some of the pages. Ater "in a hollow, warm and snug, the squirrels share a bedtime hug", we give a hug. After "in their den, so safe and deep, bears rock their tiny cub to sleep", we rock and hum a tune, which our 2yo calls the "bears rocking" song. Worth noting, this book has "mama" and "papa" animals, though not on every page - as seen in examples above, some just refer to the group of animals. So it feels suitable for many families. And in fact, we omit the gender pronouns altogether and it reads just fine that way: "papa rabbit whispers hush, and tucks his babies into beds of brush" becomes "papa rabbit whispers hush, and tucks the babies into beds of brush"; "mama doe kisses her sleepy fawns" becomes "mama doe kisses sleepy fawns". On the final page, it simply says, "night night friends, the day is done, we'll see you in the morning sun" but it also depicts all 8 animals from the book, so we always read it by pointing at each animal and saying, one by one, "night night fox, night night bunny, night night bear..." (etc) and our 2yo loves it, and when first becoming verbal used to like to say the night-nights independently. Love this simple little book so much. It rarely gets read anymore, but periodically we do pull it out and say, "we're reading this one tonight" and our 2yo (usually) doesn't protest.

Lovely illustrations from Teagan White, though a bit simpler than with some other Teagan White-illustrated books. We own this as a hard cover book. It is short and sweet and great for bedtime. One illustration in the book is a bit odd, though relatively harmless: it depicts a parent cat (slightly anthropomorphized, standing on hind legs, wearing an apron) giving a kitten milk from a milk carton. We felt like, why isn't the kitten just nursing? So we have always laughed at this and explained the absurdity to our little one.

We have the hardcover of this (even though it's available as a board book, we feel like the hardcover book is nicer). This is a sweet addition to the "love letter from parent to child" genre (though, it will work for any caregiver adult to child relationship b/c it's written in 2nd person, like the title, and doesn't specify, so could also work for a grandparent, for instance). Most of the children depicted have an overall gender-neutral vibe to them, and we like that. The illustrations, by Teagan White are (no surprise) quite adorable, though simpler than some other Teagan White-illustrated books. It took us many read-throughs to not cry every time we read this aloud, as it also kind of reads like a book for a child from a deceased loved one (and we couldn't help but wonder if Amy Krouse Rosenthal wrote it for her own loved ones when she already knew she was dying of cancer, though this is pure speculation). This has been a wonderful choice for bedtime since our little one was pre-verbal.

This book is so sweet! We change the words a bit, b/c we don't call it "nursies", but that's an easy change to whatever the parents call nursing in their family. The book does have a heteronormative vibe, and says "mommy", but doesn't mention the other parent who is depicted there. Since the characters look enough like me and my spouse, we refer to them the way we refer to ourselves, as bibi and mama. The illustrations are so pretty. We haven't even attempted to night wean, but we still like reading this book every so often so our 2yo can become familiar with the concept that some parents, sometimes, will not offer milk in the night. And so it feels nice to think that some day, if we decide to do the same, our little one will already be long familiar with the concept.

This book is just an adorable part of the halloween genre. It's got ghosts playing, painting, dressing up, playing a drum, skateboarding, playing with blocks, taking a bubble bath, cooking, watching the TV (depicted is cartoonified vampire and zombie). Then they get startled by a bat, and spooked by a little mouse and run inside the house, and they all get sleepy and snuggle up in bed. Just sweet and innocent, nothing scary. It's also nice for the much younger ages, like when my little one was 1yo, to look for the black cat, the frog, and the spider that make a cameo on each page. My now 2yo, when we look at this book, always points at these accessory characters and giggles when they're in a funny spot. This book is light fluff, but because we're obsessed with halloween, it feels like a must for helping introduce very little ones to halloweeny stuff. Only VERY slightly annoying thing is that they do use gender pronouns for the ghosts a few times, and the "she" ghost is the pink one. So unnecessary. Of course we just read the gender pronouns as "they" on the only 3 occasions they are used. The rest of the pages refer to multiple ghosts at a time and therefore are already "they".

Okay, so, the rhyming cadence in this book has quite a few forced lines, and it's one of my pet peaves (I'd rather them not even bother with rhyming if it forces you to put the accent on an unnatural part of a word, where it doesn't belong, which sounds so odd and not poetic or lyrical, ugh). BUT, I give it a pass because (a) we're a halloween-obsessed family and we need to have some age-appropriate books to teach the emblems of halloween, so that means we are willing to be a bit less selective but also (b) the text is really very sweet, and that sweetness sort of makes up for the awkwardness of the rhyming. The pictures are cute, and it's SUCH a short read, that when we are rushed at bedtime, it's a great choice to keep it quick. Every so often you need that, so it's nice. I think this is the shortest book we own. In fact, it's shorter than some greeting cards!

This book is a book my 2yo actually enjoys. I like that it offers the ideas that the child can ask, "hug me, please" or "hold me, please" and it also has a line about getting feelings out. I think that there are many times it's too much to expect children to be able to utilize tools and strategies like those suggested in this book, especially on their own, if they are overcome by big emotions, but I still think it's a great idea to familiarize them with these options. It also seems nice that we can refer to the book, if we decide we want to co-regulate with little one, we can talk about taking deep breaths together, and this concept will already be familiar from the book.

This book exists as a normal book, but we got the board book gifted to us, and so this is the one we ended up being familiar with, and it's been a long-time favorite.

This book is short and sweet and just lovely in every way. The illustrations are perfection.