Davey loves to read with us.  I have always been a bookworm, and I converted David to “bookwormism” when we started dating about 25 years ago.  So Davey sees books around him all the time.  We started reading to him the day he was born I think.

Anyway, I used to go to the library and pick out a random bunch of books for him.  I’d look at them briefly, but I never knew for sure if we’d enjoy them, until I got them home and we tried them out. We found some great ones and some not so great ones (overall though – the quality of the children’s books is really pretty good.  I don’t think I’d have had the same success randomly picking adult books.  Of course- they are much different.  Anyway!)

Lately I decide to start looking for the “award-winning” books.  So I started going through the Caldecott winners.  Next I started looking  at the “Best Picture Books” lists on Amazon.  Each year (each month even  I think) they put out a list of “Best Picture Books”.  They put out best of lists for all types of books, but we are focusing on the best picture books for now.

I’ve been through 2011 pretty thoroughly and 2010.  This morning I jumped to 2007.  I got quite a good list going.  Our library has most of them, although several were checked out, so I’ve placed holds.  Davey LOVES to go to the hold shelf and pick up a book that is for HIM!

This researching books takes some time, so I thought I would keep an ongoing list of our very favorites here.  I’ll update this post when I find books that we really love.  These are the books that Davey insists on reading several times. This doesn’t happen all that often, so I feel like these are the really “good” ones, at least in our minds.

SO the list begins:

1.  Press Here  by Herve Tullet.  (This book is one of our favorite books of all time.  Davey gets to participate in the reading.  It is an incredible book.  I may buy it.)

2.  Let’s Do Nothing by Tony Fucile.  Davey found this book to be really funny.

3.  Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems.  Mo Willems is great.  He is hilarious.  I recommend Mo Willems in general.  His Knuffle Bunny books are great too.  We read another book by him the other night called Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed.  Davey loved it as well.  We are In a Book  is a lot of fun too.

4.  Of course the David books by David Shannon are hilarious.  We started Davey on the board book versions of them.  We still quote one of them.  At the end, the mommy says, “Oh David, I love you.”  We try to say it in the way we imagine she says it in the book.  (slightly exasperated, but she loves him so much anyway!)

5.  I have to mention Margaret Wise Brown and Goodnight Moon.  We practically have it memorized.  As a matter of fact, we got it back out last night for the first time in a long time.  Davey enjoyed it.  He also has always loved Big Red Barn.  I almost like it better. Goodnight Moon  has a knitter in it though so of course that’s a plus.

6.  We also recently discovered Baby Brains. There are several books written about the adventures of this brainy baby.  They are a lot of fun.

7.  Blackout – we just recently read this.  It’s a beautiful book.  It’s about a family.  There is a blackout and they realize how fun it is to slow down and spend time together.  We enjoyed it a lot as well.

8. Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and Mary  This is a beautiful book by Beverly Donofrio.  The illustrations are so pretty, and it is just a nice book about a little girl and a mouse.  It’s a definite read again and again on the Davey scale.

9.  Stuck by Oliver Jeffers.  This is a hilarious book.  Talk about hyperbole and all the things that get stuck in a tree in the process of a little boy trying to rescue his kite.

Ok, I’m off to the library this morning with another list of books.  I’ll update if we find some more treasures out of this batch!