Favourite kids books that are just great books
There are so many kids books that are just great books. Full stop. And there are so many kinds of kids books. It's a hugely fun, versatile, and important genre.
The following is a chaotic mix of books for different ages, written in different ages, from my childhood and that of my niblings. The only common thread is that I enjoyed the book for whatever reason. Nor is it a full recounting of all the books I read as a child or have encountered with the niblings - who are eight and under currently though this skews towards books they needed reading to them, so, younger.
When my niece was very little I was looking for a book to read to her, going through the bookshelf, and she kept garbling "pishalass" and I was like, "I don't know which you mean," until I looked down and I was holding Peace at Last. Okay, yes. I love Peace at Least. And Five Minutes Peace. Great books last and being able to share our favourites starts early.
I'm a big Oliver Jeffers fan. The Heart and the Bottle makes me cry. Here We Are is wonderful. My favourite though is Stuck. It's just funny and kind of thoughtful and I think about it all the time.
There's a series about a hat by Jon Klassen. My favourite is We Found A Hat. I cannot describe to anyone who has not read it how profoundly moving I found it. It was a present to the niblings from someone else which I read and liked so much I bought my own copy. It is so simple, so beautiful, the dialogue, the art and how seamlessly they work together. Honestly just the perfect book.
Someone bought my niece a huge, beautiful edition of Winnie the Pooh. Other people shirked from reading it: the stories are long and liable to put you to sleep, the text is dense, the book is physically heavy. I loved it. I must have read Winnie the Pooh as a kid but the humour and the language - amazing. Rabbit objects to the idea of having to carry his friends-and-relations around in his pockets. "That's seventeen pockets," he says. "I haven't the time."
Michael Rosen is a legend and We're Going on a Bear Hunt is such a good book. My favourite bit is when they forget to close the door and have to come back down the stairs. I bought a copy in French for the kids - who have shown zero interest in it.
I've got boxes of my old books lined up waiting for my niece, who is eight. A lot of abridged classics. Stuff I read at that age or thereabouts but I hold back a bit because a lot of it just seems a bit grim and she's such a pure soul. A lot of people will say it didn't do us any harm. I'm... not so sure.
One of my favourite courses at university was on children's literature. Which was nothing to do with my degree. Maybe that's why I enjoyed it. Probably our degrees should be more like that.
Then there's a whole genre of "sure, kids can read and enjoy this but there's an appreciation you only gain as an adult." Your Hobbits, Watership Downs, Jonathan Livingston Seagulls, or Little Princes. Watership Down is one of my favourite books. As a little kid it's a wild adventure about rabbits. As an adult it's an epic about myth, tyranny, freedom, culture.
Probably I should do a proper personal canon post about formative books I read as a kid. Or just generally, it feels like I have more to say about this than I thought.