What is your favorite children's book?

I love The Velveteen Rabbit the most. I also like Goodnight Moon.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

When I was younger, I loved Curious George. I would go to the library and check out any one they had. Fortunately, curiosity never killed George :).

Where the Wild Things Are!

I have two- neither one can ‘win’ because I loved them both. There Are Rocks In My Socks, Said The Ox To The Fox and the classic- Are You My Mother? (You aren’t my mother- you’re a SNORT!!)

My favorite of all time is A Very Special House by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.

I mentioned it on another thread
That’s right

I love the Giving Tree

I’ll let you know once I finish reading it. Okay, so I’m slooooooooow.

@FutureMemory I second that!

The Little Prince – It still makes me cry.

And yes, definitely The Velveteen Rabbit, too.

Oh goodness, there are so many… The Velveteen Rabbit (which has made me feel terrible about the harm and/or throwing out of stuffed animals even to this day), Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, Where The Sidewalk Ends (and the other Shel Silverstein that I can’t remember), Where The Wild Things Are, The Pokey Little Puppy, There’s A Monster At The End Of This book… so many I don’t even remember…

I love The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

The Giver

A lot of my faves have already been said and quite frankly i’m having trouble thinking of one in particular for myself.

However my sister had a clear favorite that was quite cute. Alexander and the terrible horrible no good very bad day. lol

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

The Lorax is another one I love dearly.

Well, I read Goodnight, Moon to my son every night.

I love Someday it always makes me cry! even when not pregnant! I just love it.
Also, The Giving Tree.

My son enjoys bright books, he likes Dinos To Go…which is a Sandra Boynton book..kids seem to love them.

Any Richard Scarry books were my faves. When I look at them now, I still love them. Classics!!

Harold and the Purple Crayon!

The Box of Delights

Where the Wild Things Are, Six Dinner Sid, The Mr. Men, King Nonn the Wiser and The Funny Bones books and a lot more that escape me at the moment!

Edit: Oh, and all the Dr. Seuss Books especially Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham

Lots of people responding!!!
My favourite book when I was about 6 was Alfie Gets in First by Shirley Hughes and Gregory The Terrible Eater. I also loved reading my Sesame Street book that was personilized with my name in and my family’s names in!
As I got a bit older I loved Enid Blyton books, The Little Princess and Secret Garden.

@FutureMemory You get extra lurve from me. I have been trying to remember the name of that story for a couple of months now. I love it.

oh I forgot about the Richard Scarry books!

Okay I know. What I loved to read as a kid was this series: Scary Stories

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, which won the Caldecott Medal in 1963.

The Polar Express

@shego Thank you! I was going to list that one, but I forgot the name of it. That’s the one that’s only illustrated and has no words, right?

Ohh another Dr Seuss…. Yertle the Turtle!

Little Monsters!

FROG and TOAD!

I’m on a roll

We also had a big collection of the Golden Books, which were mostly really great.

I’ve collected children’s books since i was small, and I home school. There’s no way I could list just one!

For autumn: The Lonely Scarecrow & Little Scarecrow Boy
winter: Stranger in the Woods & First Snow in the Woods & Snowmen at Night
spring: Bunny’s Noisy Book
summer: Lost in the Woods

Fun to read aloud with rhythm: Pajama Time! & Food Fight!

Every home library should include: The Fairy Books (Red, Blue-etc), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz & some version of Mother Goose (We like the Mary Engelbreit or McCue illustrated versions best)

Favorite Children’s Authors and/or Illustrators: Margaret Wise Brown, Lorna Balian, Mary Engelbreit, Lisa McCue, A.A.Milne, Tasha Tudor, Rien Poortvliet, Beatrix Potter, Chris Van Allsburg, David Kirk, Rosemary Wells, Michael Garland, Don freeman, Laura Numeroff, Mark Moulton Kimball, Eloise Wilken, James Herriot…

When I posed this question to my son while helping him set up a train and answer here, he said “I love all my books!”.

Any and all Richard Scarry.

@DrasticDreamer Polar Express has words…many less than the movie, though

@forestGeek We love our classic Golden Books, too!

@SpatzieLover Hmm. I don’t think it’s the same book, then. Damn.

@DrasticDreamer Could it be a book by Peter Collington? His are usually wordless and well illustrated

Lamont the lonely monster

Note: I just looked up this book as it is my favorite and realized it is out of print and collectible. It is a shame- the price is silly and the book should still be available to kids.

@SpatzieLover I’m not sure. It’s about a train. And a bell, I think. But it doesn’t have any words, and the pictures are very dreamy looking.

@DrasticDreamer: ugh I know exactly what you’re talking about and I can’t remember either :(

Anything that’s Dr. Suess

@Dog I bet there are copies at St. Vinneys or Goodwill.

@DrasticDreamer I believe that one is the Snowman by Raymond Briggs

@Dog It’s only $15 bucks on eBay! I get a lot of my collector editions there.

@RedPowerLady I bet it can be found somewhere like that. I have my original copy. It is well-worn and I read it to my kids. It just seems a shame that such a heart-warming story that teaches kids to be kind to one another is no longer available to this generation.

@Shego: !!!! Can we please give him 100 lurve for that??

@Dog – And ABE has it for $35. The problem with really good children’s books is that they are basically “loved to death” so relatively few copies survive intact.

@Dog That is certainly a bumper :(

@poofandmook I would. I grew up with that one. I always waited for every Christmas to come around just so I could watch it. I also had the book when I was little

Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus is my favorite one to read to my kids.

The Teddy Bear Twins Take a Trip Was my favorite book because I thought it was written about my brother and I and I Loved the illustrations.

@d_felice When my son was 5 he made his very first, decently funny joke. The Hungry Caterpillar had been sitting on the coffee table for a few days. As Chris walked by I said, “Take the Hungry Caterpillar to your room.“He said, “Why? There’s nothing to eat in there!” Booo Ya! Nice one, son!

Frog and Toad. All AA Milne and Rudyard Kipling.

The Last Unicorn

Dead tie between “Perry Poops” and “Terry Toots”

@shego Nope, not that one either. Damn, this sucks!

@DrasticDreamer Maybe start another question asking what the book could be? People seem to have success with movies and songs that way.

The Froggy books. I read them to my sons over 10 years ago. Now I am reading them to my daughter. I love them!

@DrasticDreamer I’m working on it ;)

@jonsblond You talking about Frog and Toad?

@Val123 No see her link for the Froggy books I like ‘em too

Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and I used to read this book with mice who had a giant strawberry? Anyone know what that was?

@JONESGH The Little Mouse, the Ripe Strawberry… yes? or no?

@SpatzieLover YES! Thank you!

@JONESGH hooray!

@DrasticDreamer so far even the wordless picture book sites don’t have it :(

I was in love with The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base.

@DrasticDreamer, it isn’t The Polar Express, but it might be another Chris Van Allsburg book. (He likes to use minimal or no words.)

I discovered the Llama, Llama series as an adult but adore them anyway; I also found I Was All Thumbs and liked that too. (It’s about an octopus. It’s very funny, in a dry way.) Flotsam is another book without words that is gorgeous.

I also liked The Rainbow Fish

@evegrimm no, not Chris Van Allsburg. I have them all

My kids all loved Sandra Boynton books when they were little. They are fun to read!

Goodnight Moon
Yummy, Yucky
Big, Little
Mama Mama and Papa Papa

Many, many of the books listed above are also fantastic, so I won’t repeat them!

If you give a moose a muffin :P

Tuesday
by David Wiesner

Gorgeous watercolors, flying frogs, and it’s completely “silent”. I love this book.

Imogene’s Antlers anyone? Jellybeans for Breakfast

The Velveteen Rabbit, the Polar Express, and Pinochio.
When I was a little older (10 or 11), A Christmas Carol and Alice in Wonderland.

Who’s House Is This? and all the Bernstein Bears, BUT only when my Dad read them :D

Oh so many… “The Paper Bag Princess” is one that immediately comes to mind (such a great empowerment book), “The Stinky Cheese Man,” “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie,” Three Strong Women, “Lon Po Po,” Fin M’Coul, “Thunder Cake,” Just Plain Fancy, Heckedy Peg, The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks and oh so many more.

All that being said, I think The Twelve Dancing Princesses (for all the pictures) and Princess Furball were my favorites. I was lucky that I had a lot of people giving me books, especially those who were interested in a greater cultural understanding, so I had a lot of books from Asian cultures and others. I had a lot of mythology and folklore from almost every culture on an appropriate level.

I’d have to go look at my mother’s shelves at the primary school (which are going to be denuded a bit when I have kids and reclaim some of my books) for some other books, but my absolute favorites never were allowed to go down there. The best thing about her being a teacher is that I never stopped having access to really good children’s books and some of my favorites, like The Princess Who Lost Her Hair, are newer and things that weren’t published when I was little.

The Frog and Toad books. You can read these over and over and enjoy them each time.

I read Dr. Suess, Curious George, and I distinctly remember Morris the Moose.
As I got older I read The Phantom Tollbooth. I actually bought a copy not too long ago. Just as entertaining as it was years ago.

I can’t believe I forgot the Berenstein Bears. I had practically every one. Still do, actually, in my grandmother’s attic.

@poofandmook Did you know they had a “preteen bear” or whatever version of the Berenstein Bears?

@avvooooooo: do you mean a different “series” of BB books?

@poofandmook Kinda. These deal with big teenage/preteen issues. Music, bullying, female football players and gender stereotypes…

@skfinkel I AM NOT AFRAID!!!!!

@Val123 YES YOU ARE!!!!!

@avvooooooo No, YOU are! Here. Have something to eat. http://i1011.photobucket.com/albums/af239/christine_yi/Jeju-do/DSCN2721.jpg

@Val123 Nummy!

I also loved The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde!!

As an older child I adored the Roald Dahl books.

@RedPowerLady Roald Dahl’s books are wonderful! My daughter has loved them for years now, and lately I’ve started reading them to my boys. I can hardly read “The BFG” out loud because it makes me laugh so hard.

My daughter went through a phase where she loved the Junie B. Jones books. The Magic Treehouse series is also good, as are A to Z Mysteries. I’d suggest those for kids in kindergarten up through second or third grade, either for reading out loud or reading alone.

You can’t beat the classics though. How about Shel Silverstein? The Giving Tree always gets a mention, but I adored his other poetry books as a kid.

@avvooooooo: I had a few of those, but mostly I had the soft covers for the younger ones.

I hearts BFG.

OH! My fav book when I was small was “One Day In Maine” by Robert McCloskey. I love all of his books. His treasury/collection is another great one for the home library.

As an older child I, too, loved Roald Dahl, but I also loved Arthur Ransome, Narnia, Susan Cooper, Edward Eager, Enid Blyton, the Cherry Ames series, and the Mark Tidd series by Clarence Budington Kelland.

@MissAusten My lil brother adored BFG and he always called his farts whizpoppers, and in public too. It took us awhile to break him of that, lol.

@Darwin show off ~

@RedPowerLady Actually, I have always been a nerd and a book junkie.

@Darwin I was just giving you a hard time, hehe :)

@RedPowerLady I know. It’s just that I am a nerd and sometimes too earnest.

@Darwin You sound very much like a friend of mine who proudly expresses her nerdness. She is also a very avid book reader and has to buy two books when she wants to read one thoroughly because she needs one for her library where the spine isn’t damaged. I witnessed her reading one of these books and she opens it about two inches, i don’t know how she can even see the words.

@RedPowerLady – Sounds like my kind of person!

The Gashlycrumb Tinies – A favorite of mine still. I remember reading it with my grandfather-I love it so much that I doubt anyone is still reading this question but posted it anyway. http://www.wickedsunshine.com/GoodVibes/TheGashlycrumbTinies.html

Anything by Edward Gorey is always delightful, in a macabre kind of way. I don’t know that they always make the best bedtime stories (unless you are a member of the Addams Family), but they are very clever.

The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish

@Gokey – Neil Gaiman rocks whatever age group he is writing for!

I had one when I was little called “Le Seigneur de l’Ombre”, which translates as The Lord of Shadow.

It was one of those choose your own adventure books, but very dark, mature and morbid, and with a simplified Dungeons & Dragons combat scheme for when you ran into monsters.

I was captivated by it, because it was so ambient, and the drawings, although merely black and white, were superb and awe inspiring.

Granted, that wasn’t really a children’s book, but even when my breasts weren’t there I was still totally badass.

http://i00.twenga.com/livres/dragon-d-or-numero-3-le-seigneur-de-l-ombre-b_221664vb.png

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
The Very Hungry Caterpillar

My favorite book as a youngster was The Stinky Cheese Man.
I recently bought the same book for my little brother and started reading it to him (he’s an 8 year old) His reaction was to question it and start laughing. Then he asked me to read again. Ahhh memories.

Go Dog Go! I love how the lady dog keeps asking “Do you like my hat?” and the guy dog goes “No, I do not like your hat!!” and then they say “Goodbye” and “Goodbye” It’s a great shtick! ha ha.