Eli is a big reader. He would read all day, non-stop, if he could figure out a non-stationary way to read. I think what he really wants is for me to have Inspector Gadget arms so I could walk behind him while holding the book in front of him and turning the pages for him. He’d love that.
I used to write book recommendations all the time but now I hardly ever get to read anything with fonts that are either a) 12-point or b) not a Comic Sans derivative. [shudder] So these will have to suffice for now. In any case, the following are Eli’s twenty favorite books at the moment, complete with plot summaries by yours truly.
Noodle Loves to Cuddle: In one of two simultaneously released installments of the Noodle Loves… series, we meet a young panda named Noodle. He loves ducks, balls, phones, blankets and his mom. Basically he’s a typical kid, except he’s a panda.
Noodle Loves Bedtime: This is the other installment released in 2011 of the Noodle Loves… series. Here we discover the things that Noodle loves about his bedtime routine, such as splashing in the bath, drinking from a bottle, brushing his teeth, his fluffy stuffed sheep, and sleeping. The strange thing about this book is that Noodle is old enough to brush his teeth by himself – using regular toothpaste, nonetheless – but is still drinking from a bottle. Seems a bit incongruous to me.
Noodle Loves the Beach: In 2012 two new Noodle Loves… books were published; the only reason that the other, Noodle Loves to Eat, isn’t on this list is that we had to return it to the library. But this volume is a great favorite of Eli’s. Noodle and his mother take a trip to the beach, and we are informed of Noodle’s love for boats, sand, splashing (again), and snacking on peaches, along with his obvious love for the beach. This is my least favorite of the Noodle books for three reasons. First, Eli likes to detach the sail on the boat from the book but then gets frustrated if it’s not where it’s supposed to be. Second, because one of the touch-and-feel pages has sandpaper on it and Eli likes to scratch his fingernails over it: this gives me the heebie-jeebies. And third, Noodle’s mom brings what is purported in the text to be a “sticky peach” as a snack to the beach where there is sand? This seems like something no actual mom would do because that’s just asking for a grit-covered fruit and – by extension – a grumpy child with low blood sugar. I just have a hard time with the lack of realism. (Of course, the fact that the pandas are wearing clothes and taking vacations to beaches was somehow not a problem for me.)
Little Blue Truck: The Little Blue Truck (henceforth referred to as LBT) is a pretty great guy. He likes to say hello to all the farm animals as he drives by them. One day a rude dump truck speeds by and gets stuck in the mud. All the animals passively-aggressively pretend they can’t hear his cries for help because he didn’t say hi to them when he drove by. LBT, on the other hand, rises above all that and goes to see what he can do. Naturally he can’t push a giant dump truck out of the mud because he’s too small. The LBT gets stuck too. (Spoiler alert!) The animals come to help because he was nice to them, both trucks get out of the mud, and the dump truck learns an important lesson. Lots of great animal sounds and beautiful illustrations, plus the text is pretty easy to memorize for “reading aloud” while actually doing something like reading the first Game of Thrones book on your Kindle. I haven’t done this, though. Obviously. That would be wrong.
Little Blue Truck Leads the Way: In this riveting sequel to Little Blue Truck, our friend LBT heads into the big city. Once again he is the only friendly character, as all of the other cars and trucks are too busy doing their jobs to be nice. And in the end LBT wins. The text and pictures are both lovely, as in the first LBT book, and I hope there are more in the works. Personally I’m hoping for Little Blue Truck Becomes a Rock and Roll Roadie.
Red Truck: Red Truck is probably LBT’s cousin or something. At the very least he’s LBT’s brother from another mother. They definitely get along. In any case, one rainy day, a school bus can’t make it up a hill and Red Truck comes to the rescue while all of the kids stand out in the snow. First of all, if it’s so rainy, why is there so much snow still on the ground? And why aren’t the kids getting wet? Also, the mechanic who let that school bus out of the garage with apparently bald tires probably needs to lose his job. The author doesn’t mention all the phone calls that the school administration received from those kids’ parents for not sending another bus immediately so their kids didn’t have to stand in the cold, but I’m assuming they occurred. BUT Red Truck saves the day so who cares about the resulting bureaucratic nonsense. Am I right?
First 100 Words: There is no plot in this book. I mean, none. But it is great for teaching identification, particularly if your child thinks all objects of transportation are cars and all things edible are apples. I don’t know any kids like that, though.
First 100 Animals: The author of this book has a strange sense of what animals should be a child’s first 100 to learn. There are the traditional animals, sure – bears, fish, cows, dogs, cats – but then there’s other ones like terrapin and wallaby and orangutan. Don’t get me wrong, I love terrapins and wallabies and orangutans as much as the next girl; but they are quite a bit harder to say than “bird” and “pig.”
We Belong Together: We all love this book even though Ryan says it doesn’t make any sense. He mostly can’t get past the page that says” [we belong together] like a special fork and spoon.” Eli hasn’t started choosing his own silverware yet; I have a hunch that when he does, Ryan will suddenly understand what that means. Another friend pointed out that the cover is misleading because it pictures milk and cookies and there aren’t any milk and cookies in the book itself. But the illustrations are tremendous and I have read this about fifty bajillion times.
You Are My Cupcake: This is a companion to We Belong Together. Eli vacillates between which one he prefers; right now we’re in a Cupcake phase. In fact, I can say to him, “You are my…” and he’ll respond, “Cuh-cah!” It’s very cute. Today I actually got him to stop throwing a tantrum by distracting him with the text of this book. Thanks, Joyce Wan! Again, fun illustrations and a cute concept.
Alice in Wonderland: A BabyLit Colors Primer: The BabyLit series is great. Really, really great. I highly recommend all of them, even if the plot aspects are lacking. In this book, readers can learn their colors based on characters from Alice in Wonderland (orange cat, white rabbit, red hearts, etc.), complete with wonderful whimsical illustrations. Someday I hope to own this whole series of books.
Apple Pie ABC: A really charming ABC book about a dog who desperately wants some apple pie, and the adorable girl who won’t give him any. She even cuts a piece and eats it right in front of him (which, I might add, begs the question Where is her mother while she’s brandishing knives and gobbling down pieces of pies that are as big as her torso?). But despite this, it is a fun alphabet book that’s different from most of the other ones out there. Plus Eli acts surprised that there is a dog on every page, and that’s entertaining.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?: This was my favorite book as a child and Eli loves it too. In case you don’t know it (I’m assuming this means you don’t have kids and also were not a kid yourself), this book is about – spoiler alert, again! -a classroom full of kids that see all different kinds of animals and their teacher looking at them. Probably the teacher has posters of these animals “looking” at the kids, as I can’t imagine that she actually brought in a brown bear and a purple cat to the classroom. The goldfish and green frog, maybe. Anyhow, Brown Bear, Brown Bear is a classic for good reason: it is a wonderful book.
Where Is Maisy?: Eli still reads this even though he’s figured out the ending. Another spoiler alert – There’s Maisy! RIGHT THERE IN THE SAME PLACE AS THE LAST TIME YOU READ THIS BOOK! I’ll ask Eli, “Where’s Maisy?” and he flips to the last page, opens the flap, points to Maisy, and throws the book. A few minutes later he usually feels kind of bad about it, finds the book, and goes through the whole thing flap by flap. It seems like he’s doing Maisy a favor when he finds her the second time through.
Where’s Spot?: Shockingly enough, Eli has not, in fact, figured out where Spot is. (Hint: pretty much the same place as Maisy.) I have not figured out why Spot’s mom has a bear in her closet, a lion under the stairs, a hippo in her piano, etc. I would be quite alarmed if I couldn’t find Eli one day and in the process of looking discovered random people hiding all over my house, even if they were helpful in pointing out that Eli was not with them. But maybe dogs don’t have this problem.
But Not the Hippopotamus: In this book, a hippopotamus feels left out of all the things that her fun rhyming-named friends are doing. It’s basically how my acquaintance Sabrina felt all the time growing up with her siblings Candy, Randy, and Sandy. Anyhow. At the end the hippopotamus gets included after all as the whole gang goes running for no apparent reason. But not the armadillo. Eli always points and laughs at the “na-na,” which I think is his word for “armadillo.” I keep explaining that it’s not nice to laugh at people getting left out but he doesn’t listen. Hopefully I’ll get that drilled into his head before he starts school.
Fifteen Animals: So this guy has fifteen animals and they each have a name – Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob… Guess what the twist at the end is? SPOILER ALERT: the fifteenth animal isn’t named Bob. Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, man. Apparently there is a song that can be downloaded for free that goes along with the book. I think I’m probably grateful that Eli will outgrow this book before he can read the fine print on the front that such a song exists. But all kidding aside, this is a cute counting book, as long as you don’t have anyone in your house named Bob.
Tinsel Tots: It’s obviously not Christmas anymore, but Eli loves looking at the photographs of babies dressed up in various holiday costumes. He points at every picture and says, “baby! baby!” If I got him to speed it up a little bit, he’d be Justin Bieber over there. Except Eli doesn’t really say the letter b in baby so it sounds more like “gung-gung.” Eli is so strange. Back to Tinsel Tots, though. It kind of creeps me out a little bit but Eli enjoys it so I didn’t pack it away with the Christmas decorations. The sacrifices I make for this kid.
Peek-A-Who?: This is a good book for kids to work on pronouncing their “ooh” sounds. It has cute pictures, great anticipatory value, and a mirror at the end. My kid reads the cow pages and then skips to the train pages but I’m hopeful that someday soon he will notice that there is actually more to the book than that.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar (abridged): Yes, there is an abridged version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It reads as follows. “one apple / two pears / three plums / four strawberries / nice green leaf / beautiful butterfly”. The first time Ryan saw this book, he read it aloud to Eli and then said, “That’s it? I really remember there being more to this…” After I finished laughing, I explained that this one is the baby version of TVHC. Eli really likes the regular version of this book too, but he reads the abridged version at pretty much every diaper change. It’s basically Eli’s back-of-the-toilet book. It’s been discontinued, so sorry kids: you’ll have to read the LOOOOOOOONG version.