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community weblog
The Pigeon Has a Meltdown (What Kids Really Want From Picture Books)
"[Adults] want books that feel obviously enriching in ways we can quickly quantify. Meanwhile, the actual child would like the pigeon to have another meltdown. This is, I think, one of the great misunderstandings adults have about picture books. Adults are often looking for something worthy. Children are looking for something alive." Rachel Bachman's Substack essay, What Children Actually Want From Picture Books.
"Children do not come to picture books hoping to admire them from a tasteful distance. They come wanting an experience. They want to laugh. They want to shout the refrain. They want to spot something in the illustration before the grown-up notices it. They want the page turn to land like a joke. They want the story to build enough tension that the whole room leans forward. They want the thrilling little power of knowing what is about to happen and being right.
"They want humor, rhythm, weirdness, surprise, tension, and the joy of being in on the joke.
"And honestly, they are right."
(Yes, I know it's Substack. Nonetheless, this is a piece worth discussing.)
Updated to add AlSweigart's suggested archive.today [https://archive.ph/RRygO] link to the essay
posted by MonkeyToes on Apr 14, 2026 at 8:34 AM
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Two of my recent favorites for picture books that are alive: Don't Trust Fish and We Are Definitely Human.
I am desperate for others! Gifters and/or purchasers of picture books, please add your recent fun favorites.
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:36 AM
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I legit clicked on this hoping that there was a new Pigeon installment called The Pigeon Has a Meltdown. I slightly crashed out at not being in on the joke.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 8:48 AM
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We always liked Flying Jake. Nothing but lovely, wacky pictures and no text. It encourages kids to make-up the story as they go. Good fun.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:52 AM
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For aliveness and worthiness and utter weirdness and very child-like (which is not to say childish) joy, I cannot recommend highly enough the Stickler books by Lane Smith (or really anything by Lane Smith), especially the first one, Stickler Loves the World. This is one of my favourite books, full stop. And absolutely my favourite picture book.
Also the Hidden World of Gnomes and its sequel The Newest Gnome by Lauren Soloy are a big hit in our house, but (though I haven't read TFA yet) I suspect they might veer a little too much into the parent-pleasing mode of being "good" and "worthy" and "enriching," but they have enough life and joy and whimsy in them that they still manage to be picked up very frequently, whether my kid is choosing the story or I am.
posted by Dorinda at 8:54 AM
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They come wanting an experience.
They want Hamster Huey to have a Gooey Kablooie.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:56 AM
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I remember Sarah Marshall on the "You're Wrong About" or "You Are Good" podcast talking about how adults see children's books or movies as just low quality versions of adult stories. She phrased their thinking as, "Well, this isn't a good plot for a movie, but it's good enough for a kid's movie."
Obligatory: One of Substack's most popular accounts is violent sex trafficker Andrew Tate with 1.1 million subscribers. The platform also hosts literal Nazis and materially aids their organizing and recruitment. This 2025 article about Substack sending out push notifications for a white supremacist group has the line, "The 'serious error' harkens back to the platform's 2023 Nazi controversy." I know some folks don't mind Substack's material support of white supremacists and the Substack founder's far-right politics. Nonetheless, it's worth discussing.
Here's an archive.today link to the substack article.
posted by AlSweigart at 8:58 AM
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this formula has been perfected
follow the formula, you can't go wrong
posted by runsrealgood at 8:58 AM
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Don't Trust Fish is fantastic. Also popular with my toddler nephews:
Night Animals
100 Mighty Dragons All Named Broccoli
What Pete Ate
posted by Thivaia 2.0 at 9:02 AM
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. They want the story to build enough tension that the whole room leans forward. They want the thrilling little power of knowing what is about to happen and being right.
"They want humor, rhythm, weirdness, surprise, tension, and the joy of being in on the joke.
now we're just talking about humans in general, I think.
posted by philip-random at 9:16 AM
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When I was a kid I got the book The Stupids Have a Ball out of the library and my dad said "I don't understand why you want to read about people who are stupid when you're so smart" and I was like "?????? Because they are hilarious?" That book holds up.
posted by an octopus IRL at 9:16 AM
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| now we're just talking about humans in general, I think.
Well, the sort of humans who don't become college administrators or get MBAs.
posted by rickw at 9:22 AM
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The other day, I brought out the kid's books box for my grandchildren, and my daughter picked out Eloise. My grandson laughed so much he almost choked. If you don't remember Eloise it is weird and sometimes ugly and definitely not nice.
In Denmark and Sweden there is a very long tradition for subversive children's literature. You all probably know Astrid Lindgren, but there are plenty more great authors and filmmakers out there.
The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear is actually quite sweet and inoffensive, but Jakob Martin Strid is anything but.
posted by mumimor at 9:31 AM
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Children also don't care about virtue signaling morality lectures in their picture books. There's a time and place for real talk with kids about a wide variety of social justice issues, and I think those conversations are necessary and important. But not in a children's book, they just don't care.
posted by k8bot at 9:37 AM
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I adored The Stupids. Another big favorite was Tacky the Penguin. Yes, silly stories that are imaginative and fun are great.
That said, I couldn't help while reading this from thinking about the rise of AI slop videos on kids YouTube, which are excellent at hooking kids attention because of just how weird and fast paced they are, but child psychologists warn that its potentially detrimental to kids' brain development to be suctioning up essentially a never-ending stream of nonsequential weirdness. Which is to say, yes, the goal of reading for kids should be fun, but also I'm not sure I buy the implicit argument that adults don't have a role of curation and/or that kids' taste should be the sole arbiter of what media/stories they consume. The weird books I liked as a kid did have narrative arcs, and they even often had some sort of moral message - Tacky the Penguin was very silly and uncouth, but he was also a good egg and the other penguins eventually learned to appreciate his differences. You didn't have to care about the moral story as a kid reading the book - it was fine to just enjoy it as a story about a silly penguin.
posted by coffeecat at 9:40 AM
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Right now my kid just wants to hear the same picture book based on a movie over and over and over again. It doesn't sing.
But I do feel what the author means when they say that adults like books for nostalgia. I love The Snowy Day, but I gave it to a kid whose parents didn't grow up with it, and it did nothing for them, because they don't remember the drama of trying to keep a snowball in your pocket.
posted by jb at 9:48 AM
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Children also don't care about virtue signaling morality lectures in their picture books.
YES YES YES. I distinctly remember being bored as hell by preachy "We Are Giving You A Lesson" picture books as a kid, and the same goes for kids' TV shows and kids' movies.
Actually, the "Kids' TV shows" is a good one - you know how insipid and Goodie-Two-Shoes Barney always seems? That's what these "teaching kids a lesson" books sound like, and a lot of kids hate that shit.
And besides, a lot of the surrealist weird shit also teaches lessons too, if the writer knows their stuff.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:50 AM
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I read a lot of picture books these days. Agree with those upthread that there are a LOT of well-meaning ones that are cloying and preachy, even if, yes, I think the message is one I want my kids to absorb. They'll read it, but mostly they want to read about Piggie and Elephant (or Harold and his purple crayon! Frog and Toad! some of the classics still hold up!). They want fun art and silly rhymes or situations. they want the bear to get his hat back!
posted by dismas at 9:53 AM
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From my Facebook memories today, when my nephew was 5:
Toki, singing and playing the uke :
If you're dumb and you know it, slap your bum!
If you're dumb and you know it, slap your bum!
If you're dumb and you know it and you really want to show it,
If you're dumb and you know it, slap your bum! Pe-eww!
Auntie : where did you learn that song?
Toki : I just made it up and it's ridiculous. I love things that are ridiculous.
Not about books, but I think the lesson holds. He loves things that are ridiculous.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:01 AM
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This is so true. This is exactly why many popular children's books are popular - they are chaotic and exciting.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:12 AM
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"Here's an archive.today link to the substack article."
Thank you! I've asked the mods to add the archive.today link to the post.
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:25 AM
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I do think there is space for those 'message' books. If you need to talk to your kid about why their grandma died and why that sucks but they can keep going, a message book might be a way to start that discussion gently. But the message book you read when your kid is sad because his grandma died isn't going to be bedtime reading night after night whereas Seuss or Willems might be.
This whole thing translates into older kids, too. Much as I hate the fucking Warrior Cats books, my niece went from reluctant reader to 'I read 600 pages this weekend' because of them. She'll probably read some better shit when she's older. Or she'll be like her auntie and just read slutty romances for the rest of her life, but at least she'll know how to read.
At the end of the day, the thing you want kids to learn most is to love reading, and for that, they need books they love.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:26 AM
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IMO, I as an adult didn't care for kids books because so many of them were poorly written. Even Dr Seuss often phoned it in with nonsense not quite rhymes. Another one I generally liked was Sandra Boynton, whose books were nice, but never quite rhymed well enough to make them singable. And since kids can't read, adults have to read them and they are people too who have to be entertained enough to read a kid's favorite book for the 500th time in a week; singing them in silly voices helps.
Lots of kids books are also really wordy - we used to read this one about a frog in a pond that was like 20 pages of filler text - in serious need of an editor.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:27 AM
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Metafilter: in serious need of an editor
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:30 AM
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> Here's an archive.today link to the substack article.
Thank you. Such links should always be part of a submission that links to a Nazi bar.
posted by Ayn Marx at 10:37 AM
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I hope Kate Beaton's Shark Girl checks all the boxes because I really enjoyed gifting it this past holiday season. It's a story about worker's rights, solidarity, and a shark girl seeking REVENGE!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:39 AM
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Even Dr Seuss often phoned it in with nonsense not quite rhymes.
Contrariwise: My appreciation for Dr Seuss went up dramatically when I had kids, by comparison to the lack of attention to the rhythm of reading aloud I saw in other books.
posted by dismas at 10:40 AM
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My kiddo really loved The Book With No Pictures. It forces the adult reader to say all sorts of silly things against their will and he would just crack up every time.
posted by funkiwan at 10:43 AM
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Weirdness is not a flaw in a picture book. It is often the doorway in. It tells children this space is not governed by ordinary rules. It invites them to loosen up, to imagine, to laugh at things that would be impossible in real life.
Amen to that. Anything that is unique or original always scores big. (Why AI will never take over)
One of my oldest child's favorites was Story 1 from Eugene Ionesco:
"The uncle and the aunt named Jacqueline had some friends named Mr. and Mrs. Jacqueline, who had a little girl named Jacqueline and a little boy named Jacqueline. The little girl had dolls, three dolls, named Jacqueline, Jacqueline, and Jacqueline."
The Children's Theater of the Absurd
posted by mrgrimm at 10:46 AM
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I have quite a big collection of illustrated children's books, and the books I love now as an adult are very different from the books I loved as a child.
Now I love, for example, Joseph's Plant, written and illustrated by Charles Keeping. But as a child I found the illustration style overwhelming and intense, and the story deeply sad and painful. I felt far too much for the protagonist. I couldn't read "Charlie, Charlotte and the Golden Canary" at all because it featured a lost bird.
I found "The Cat in the Hat" absolutely terrifying because of all the chaos and rule breaking.
There were many other books that I loved though.
And child me and adult me absolutely despise all the Hand Christian Anderson stories. Except for the Ugly Duckling for some reason.
At the same time, as a small child, I totally adored Hieronymous Bosch. The book with all the details of The Garden of Earthly Delights was my favourite.
posted by Zumbador at 10:48 AM
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One of my oldest child's favorites was Story 1 from Eugene Ionesco:
"The uncle and the aunt named Jacqueline had some friends named Mr. and Mrs. Jacqueline, who had a little girl named Jacqueline and a little boy named Jacqueline. The little girl had dolls, three dolls, named Jacqueline, Jacqueline, and Jacqueline."
Oh I loved this book too! The amazing illustrations. Is it that book where they get stuck on the sun because their plane melts?
posted by Zumbador at 10:50 AM
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My 2 year old is currently jamming on The Monster at the End Of the Book (OG Grover edition).
We occasionally have to review that, however upset Grover gets, WE know that the monster in question is, in fact
posted by DebetEsse at 10:53 AM
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The author never reveals it, but I can't help thinking 'the pigeon has a meltdown' refers to a scene in Are you my Mother.
When my son was a tot, we learned that we could literally make him cry while reading that scene with the appropriate dramatic inflection. He would cry every time, even though he KNEW that baby bird would be reunited with his mother and perfectly fine in the end. And he asked for that book over and over again.
So yeah, supporting anecdata right there.
posted by rekrap at 10:54 AM
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"The uncle and the aunt named Jacqueline had some friends named Mr. and Mrs. Jacqueline, who had a little girl named Jacqueline and a little boy named Jacqueline. The little girl had dolls, three dolls, named Jacqueline, Jacqueline, and Jacqueline."
George Forman must have liked this book. Or the author also got hit in the head a lot.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:54 AM
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What works for some children will not work for others. If your child is very impressionable, please, do yourself a favor and hide the Calvin and Hobbes.
posted by phooky at 10:56 AM
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The author never reveals it, but I can't help thinking 'the pigeon has a meltdown' refers to a scene in Are you my Mother.
It's likely a reference to the series of Pigeon books by Mo Willems - Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, etc. They're fun books where the kid is given a job in opposition to the Pigeon, who then proceeds to freak the fuck out. They're a blast, although they shred your vocal chords if you read them properly.
He's also got a series of books about Elephant and Piggy, which have very, very light moral instruction (it's good to share, be kind, don't give up, etc) while also being extremely chaotic and fun. My absolute favorite book to read to my daughter is My Friend is Sad, because I get to be the Elephant screaming about how sad he is that he saw "A COOL, COOL ROBOT" and "A FUNNY, FUNNY CLOWN" and nobody was there to share it with him.
posted by Ragged Richard at 11:14 AM
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My kid, who is now 18, loved the Beatrice Potter books: Peter rabbit, Tom kitten, Jemima puddle duck, and especially the Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (whooooo's been diggin' up my nuts?!, with the whoooooooo's going on as long as possible to great hilarity) . She also loved the Olivia books and had a plush Olivia toy to hold onto while we read, it still sits in her room.
posted by waving at 11:17 AM
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Yeah, The Monster At The End Of This Book totally lives up to this. I've seen both my kids and other people's kids practically wetting themselves laughing as the book progresses, even better if the book reader is willing to put the appropriate amount of acting into it (I do a good Grover impersonation). It totally builds to absurd levels that doesn't get old even knowing the ending.
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:24 AM
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If you need to talk to your kid about why their grandma died and why that sucks but they can keep going, a message book might be a way to start that discussion gently.
So can Charlotte's Web, though.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:30 AM
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Kids want fart jokes. Who doesn't?
posted by biffa at 11:32 AM
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did somebody say
posted by runsrealgood at 11:33 AM
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Pigeon books by Mo Willems - Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, etc.
Ah, clearly I am out of touch with current picture book offerings. My son turned 32 last week and my grandbaby is not yet plot-following age.
posted by rekrap at 11:41 AM
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It's a good piece but it's focused on reading aloud which isn't the only way to enjoy a picture book. My kid loved the "Little Red Train" books by Benedict Blathwayt which have amazingly detailed pictures, you can spend forever looking at the tiny details and characters on every page.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:42 AM
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One great answer to picture books in a lot of cases is Robert Munsch. (Except Love You Forever which is kind of sentimental.) Good illustrations, good humorous writing, and if you read enough of them ( go beyond Paperbag Princess!) you see a lot of inclusion, which was driven by real people. The only thing is avoid Mortimer if you don't want to have to Sing That Song which is in my head now (parents who have read it know what I mean...bing, bang, rattle...)
I actually think kids books need good stories. Not moral stories of good people just darn good stories. They can be goofy like not letting a pigeon drive a bus but that's still a pretty good narrative structure.
Children's librarians are simply the best source of all things picture book.
Aside:
Here's an archive.today link to the substack article.
Thank you. Such links should always be part of a submission that links to a Nazi bar.
Archive.today was blacklisted by Wikipedia, no? Or is that over?
posted by warriorqueen at 11:54 AM
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Our kids were very big into rhythm and rhyme, and two books in particular stood out:
Tanka Tanka Skunk by Steve Webb, which has such a strong and delightful rhythm. "LEMUR llama llama LEMUR / zebra badger BAT // cat-er-pil-lar big gorilla / yakety yakety YAK"
Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw and Margot Apple. It's been years since I read it regularly and yet I still find myself muttering, "UH oh. jeep won't go."
posted by sgranade at 12:05 PM
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The Stinky Cheese Man, by John Scieszka, has been a big hit as a gift—popular with the kids AND the adults who read to them
posted by librosegretti at 12:14 PM
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Even Dr Seuss often phoned it in with nonsense not quite rhymes.
Contrariwise: My appreciation for Dr Seuss went up dramatically when I had kids, by comparison to the lack of attention to the rhythm of reading aloud I saw in other books.
dismas
Yes, exact same for me. The_Vegetables, sorry, I know it's just your opinion, but your opinion is wrong. You can very easily see why Seuss became so dominant in kids books when you read his work alongside others, which is mostly dreck. Seuss's genius is the exact opposite of the above criticism: clever rhymes and rhythms from what seem like nonsense words. More modern children's books tend to do the opposite, inserting nonsense filler for no reason other than to make a rhyme work, which comes across as incoherent and half-assed.
The Little Golden Books (the old ones, at least) are also really good about this. When you just read A Day at the Seashore normally you can sense the rhythm of the words, it's really well done.
Honestly, I've come around to be against what this post is about. I feel like modern children's books lean too heavily into "be silly and fun" and sacrifice any attempt at substance, just as modern kid movies have.
posted by star gentle uterus at 12:17 PM
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I loved this post. Please spam this to every picture book publisher so maybe they'll send us less trash. My suspicion is that a lot of people come to writing picture books from other forms of writing where the book format is not as important. If we're telling a story in a chapter book for adults, the pacing across chapters sort of matters, and individual word choice sort of matters, but not to the same extent. When you are working with many fewer words, and need the text and pictures fully cooperating in moving the story forward, it is a different mode. The closest comparison I can make is writing for television, where you have 21 minutes to go from start to finish on your story and will lose people to another channel if interest lags for even 30 seconds. Note that Mo Willems, whose work is largely all killer no filler, wrote for Sesame Street.
I am also a children's librarian and I do storytime. Here are my rules for picture books:
1) Aim for one sentence per page, seven words per sentence unless you are certain you need more. Every single word should have a purpose and move the story forward.
If you can skip a page and the story still makes perfect sense, the page is unnecessary and probably harming the pacing and interest of the story. Don't make me paperclip the pages together so we can skip the filler in storytime. There are books where looking for little details and lingering over every piece is the point, but you'll notice these books also don't have "skippable" pages!
2) Something has to happen in the book; there must be a beginning, middle, and end. Something must have changed from the beginning to the end, and if that change is to the protagonist's internal state, it needs to be NOT SUBTLE. You may be surprised how many picture books are a gentle meditation on being-ness or the appreciation of winter or whatever. This is fine in moderation reading individually, but it straight up does not work for kids in storytime.
3) Please don't mess up the timing of the joke with the illustrations. The setup and reveal need to happen with a page turn in between them. The pictures need to move the story along as much as the words do.
If the setup is "What's behind this door?" and the reveal is "It's a lion!!!" then these CAN'T BE ON THE SAME PAGE. Everyone is going to see the lion and not the door if they are on the same page, so we have immediately lost the plot. So many picture books fuck this up so bad and there is simply no reason for it.
Similarly, multi-step illustrations on the same page don't work for storytime. If the text says "He had trouble putting on the sweater" and then there are 6 illustrations of failing to put on a sweater in mildly funny ways on the same page, this is OK for reading together on an individual basis, but it doesn't really work with the "performance" nature of storytime, not least because I am trying to pivot around to show the pictures to a room of like 20-30 people and they are too small. We all process at our own speeds, so half the people are trying to figure out what happened in the pictures and the other half are bored because they got it already. One clear picture OR a series of escalating pictures on different page spreads are the way to communicate if you need to use illustrations of progression for story reasons.
Anyway. Lot of people don't understand the assignment when they write picture books. Thank you for coming to my TED talk, lol.
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:21 PM
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Lots of kids books are also really wordy
Here's my dirty secret: I self-edited everything when I would read to my child. Sometimes it was in French that I translated on the fly, or for content (like my old racist Babar books - the new ones have been changed), but a lot of times I just didn't like how they were written so would change the words to be more rhythmic or more clear or funnier. Sometimes the story was simply boring so I sped them up with some on the fly editing. Especially older books. But some of those were simply too difficult to render into something enjoyable - Berenstain Bears for instance were hopelessly preachy & condescending or the original Thomas the Tank Engine books made me want to burn the Fat Conductor in effigy and reduce the ridiculously irritating engines into scrap. I did like the Curious George books which are kind of bonkers.
My kid had very eclectic tastes back then which I think were largely driven by aesthetics. They simply preferred certain art styles over others. Some of their favourites were the earthy & urban Ezra Jack Keats books but particularly Goggles! I read that book probably a hundred times. Another favourite, and it relates to what the linked article mentions regarding humour, the Tomi Ungerer illustrated book That Pest Jonathan, about a misbehaving Jonathan who terrorises the family and their guests in hilariously irritating ways and is given the diagnosis in the end that he's simply too tightly wound from behaving that he needs to misbehave to unwind and the parents should allow for that. Another favourite was Who needs donuts? by Mark Alan Stamaty about a kid who leaves home on his tricycle for the big city to find donuts, befriends a middle aged weirdo who abandons him when he falls in love with a woman who sells pretzels, and the kid uses his donuts to save a miserable old lady from drowning in coffee in her basement apartment.
A friend of mine swore by the story book version of the Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame as the ultimate sleep inducer. I didn't entirely believe him so one time I was babysitting his son and pulled that book off the shelf and started to read. He wasn't wrong - a third of the way through the kid and me were fast asleep!
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:31 PM
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More modern children's books tend to do the opposite, inserting nonsense filler for no reason other than to make a rhyme work, which comes across as incoherent and half-assed.
Sure the best Seuss does that, but the lesser works? He totally just jams in nonsense words that barely even rhyme. If you stick to Seuss, stick to the most popular and you'll be fine.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:41 PM
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Some of the picture books I remember most as a kid stuck because of their beautiful art. Sometimes "fun" art, but not necessarily. As far as story, all the ones that I loved enough to remember had warm relationships or warm characters, or a setting I really loved. In most cases I don't remember tension or plot development. I loved Frog and Toad, but I can't say I remember the plots of any of the stories except for a few I reread as an adult; what I remember is their personalities and the relationship. And there were random things that drew me in too: there was a book where two friends had two different color tea sets, one red and one blue, and somehow the color element was fascinating.
All of which is to say, kids like all kinds of things, and books don't have to have explosions or gross-out humor or the verbal equivalent of neon to be really well loved.
But the author's point about "worthiness" not being enough is right. (I feel that way about books in general, not just children's books; people keep being like "this book has element X and Y in combination with Z? Clearly it's right up my alley!" and I keep thinking "but what's the writing like?" Plot outlines and lessons learned aren't what make a book.)
I also remember a distinct feeling as a little kid of not liking books that felt like they were trying too hard to speak to Kids These Days. The ones trying too hard to be wacky or zany or cool, and not being able to back it up with quality.
I did like the Curious George books which are kind of bonkers.
And just like that the George and Martha books come to mind
posted by trig at 1:10 PM
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If you need to talk to your kid about why their grandma died and why that sucks but they can keep going, a message book might be a way to start that discussion gently.
So can Charlotte's Web, though.
Charlotte's Web is not for 3 year olds. This is not rocket science, come on.
posted by vunder at 1:12 PM
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What age range are we talking about? I thought Winnie the Pooh was really boring. I liked Dr. Suess-- he could be pretty preachy but he got away with it somehow.
As stated, most people like books where something happens and involve pretty simple emotional reactions-- this isn't just about children, though it may be saying something about the temptation to choose dull books for other people.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 1:24 PM
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My 3 year old nephew's favorite book has no story whatsoever. It's just drawings of various vehicles that he'll point to and have me read him what it is. Race car. Freight train. Tractor. Jet plane. We've gone through that book so many times now I can't wait for the day he moves on to real books. We tried one of the Pigeon books. It was fine but he seemed kinda bored. We tried Monster at the End of this Book but he doesn't watch Sesame Street so he doesn't know who Grover is (does modern Sesame Street even use Grover much?). He did enjoy The Wonky Donkey so that was a nice change. But mostly it's that damn Vehicles book.
posted by downtohisturtles at 1:58 PM
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Not quite the same thing, but my nephew went through a Dog Man phase before he grew out of the 'get Auntie to read to him and do funny voices' phase (actually, not sure that phase is entirely over, but we'll see) and those were so difficult to read out loud. Little bits of text in weird spots and non-linear dialogue tags and they were just not meant to be read to someone -- which is not really a complaint! they were not meant to be read to someone, they were meant for kids to read themselves! I liked it much better when he moved up to Bad Guys, because they are much more linear.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:13 PM
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I rediscovered Virginia Lee Burton when I had my kiddo. She of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, The Little House, Katy and the Big Snow, among others. I loved the art and stories when I was a kid, forgot all about them, and found them again when looking for books for my kiddo, who also loved them.
posted by kokaku at 2:24 PM
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One of the best part of my weeks is getting to read to preschoolers at our local library. I choose a few books from our excellently-displayed collection and tell the small group of children what each one is about. Someone will choose one, and off we go. They can also bring books to me to be read (the ones with TV series covers are not as much fun, I feel). And a few times a year an older sibling will sit down and read a book to all the children. That's pretty special!
This is all to say that I have opinions on which books they want, and they have opinions too. Sometimes they even overap
posted by mdoar at 2:30 PM
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This is why Milton the Early Riser is so damn good.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 2:48 PM
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I cringed at my kids reading Dogman wondering if it was appropriate while simultaneously thinking this is exactly the type of book I would have loved as a kid their age!
posted by TwoWordReview at 3:06 PM
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what i want from a picture book is for a beloved character from children's television to on every page beg for his life to beg and plead because he knows he knows so much he knows deep in his heart that every time i turn the page i am bringing him closer and closer and closer to the catastrophe that is waiting for him i want him to get down on his knees and pray i can't see his knees of course because they're off the bottom of the page but i know they're down there and i know he has his blue hands clasped together and he looks out of the page and he prays he looks at me with his big wet eyes and he says please stop please don't do it please don't hurt grover but i don't listen i don't know why i don't listen but i don't listen so i turn the page i pretend that it is very hard to do i turn the page slowly slowly slowly then wham! i bring it down and the wall he built collapses and then he tells me i am strong.
that's what i want from a picture book.
posted by Dr. You Can't Tip a Buick, PhD at 3:18 PM
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well I was conflicted, it troubled me to cause Grover such anxiety
but something compelled me to turn pages, I'm not proud of this but there it is
posted by runsrealgood at 3:33 PM
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I Want My Hat Back, indeed the whole Hat Trilogy by Jon Klassen, is absolutely fantastic. The moment your child suddenly understands what happens at the end is incredibly enjoyable for all involved.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 3:33 PM
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there's an Irish pub/fightin' song that goes
I had a hat when I came in of that I have no doubt
I had a hat when I came in and I'll have a hat when I go out!
and I think of that song every time I tussle with my one-eyed cat
posted by runsrealgood at 3:37 PM
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anyway re: monster at end of book it's pretty important to get your kids reading experimental metafiction early or else they'll never be the next italo calvino
posted by Dr. You Can't Tip a Buick, PhD at 3:41 PM
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"There are only three forms of high art: the symphony, the board game, and the illustrated children's book."
(Paraphrasing Brian K. Vaughan's Saga)
posted by Rudy_Wiser at 4:06 PM
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I once gave a talk about disability inclusion that began with a read of Mo Willems' Can I Play Too? (Yes, Elephant & Piggie) The audience was college students-they got it, without it being preachy, with it being fun! Yes, sometimes it's subtle, but I love it when we're in on the journey.
There was an excellent post on a Canadian children's book author who was (health-wise) sailing towards their sunset, and I was so happy to write them about their book VROOM! And the exhilaration and power that was celebrated by a child that was driving their own power wheelchair well before aging into drivers license eligibility.
Yes, I love well-crafted children's books. Sigh.
posted by childofTethys at 4:53 PM
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That's Robert Munsch! Vroum/Zoom (Zoom in English.)
posted by warriorqueen at 4:56 PM
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The favourite book - by far - for my children was Attention bobos ! The entire book is children hurting themselves. Stuffing an olive up their nose. Falling off a chair. Touching the stove. Walking in front of a car. Page after page of immediate drama and they absolutely adored it. The covers came off, the bindings came apart, nothing else came close in the toddler years.
posted by Cuke at 5:34 PM
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Sandra Boynton's books make excellent songs, and there are a number of albums of very enjoyable versions of Sandra Boynton songs. I am very fond of Neil Sedaka's "Your Nose," for instance.
I had quite a stock of good picture books in the room I keep in my house for my grandchild, and I am sad that he has moved past them and into graphic novels, National Geographic books about parasitic invertebrates, and the Bloom County anthology I left up there because my own kid loved it so much. (He thinks he's reading it in secret and that I must have put it there by mistake.)
I used to teach middle school English, and the parents continued to subscribe to the notion that their kids should be forced to read books they didn't like because it was good for them. I do not think those people ever actually read Moby Dick, which is a HOOT.
posted by Peach at 6:07 PM
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Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett also have a very good substack about kids books. (I'm sorry it's a substack.)
posted by vunder at 8:22 PM
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Oh, I have one! Fire Truck by Peter Sis. Genuinely funny book you can read to a two year old. (And then ... When he woke up... He was... A FIRE TRUCK!!!!).
posted by subdee at 8:25 PM
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This emphasis on absurdity and wackiness and chaos in picture books is all very well, but I do think it's overlooking the fact that children, even as young as about four, can be absorbed by realistic stories which depict characters going through and emerging from some realistic difficulty, where they as listeners are called upon to empathise with the character, and that such stories have a value to children (not necessarily in terms of worthiness or being instructional, but simply in terms of the conventional pleasure of hearing a story) which is not that much different to the value they have to adults.
posted by mokey at 8:43 PM
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Sam and Dave Dig a Hole is hilarious and mindblowing.
posted by destrius at 10:08 PM
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Sure the best Seuss does that, but the lesser works? He totally just jams in nonsense words that barely even rhyme. If you stick to Seuss, stick to the most popular and you'll be fine
I sort of agree and disagree here, there is a *lot* of like
"I wouldn't and won't!" Said the Zang of P'Tang,
Who xiffled and biffled and fanned a green fan
With his sleeves in a twist and his pants in a can
"And I shouldn't and shan't!" He yelled out as he ran
But it's almost always got a sense of well ordered, impish energy to it, like a verbal roadrunner/wile-e-coyote chase, even when it's not his top drawer work.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:57 AM
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For some reason I find it a lot less tiring to read books with good rhythm and rhyme. Julia Donaldson is great for this. With one of my kids I read The Gruffalo so many times I can now recite the entire book from memory and the rhyming certainly helps with that.
My kiddo really loved The Book With No Pictures. It forces the adult reader to say all sorts of silly things against their will and he would just crack up every time.
Same here, and when I'm tired of reading it for the 500th time I can really lean into the "do I HAVE to read all these silly words?? Uggggghhh" role-play. It's still fun to say "BOO BOO BUTT????" though.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:48 AM
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For me it was The Paper Bag Princess - not least because I share a name with said princess - and the delightfully witty, beautifully illustrated Church Mice books. We also got Milne's books and Where The Wild Things Are and Just So Stories, all elivated by being read to us at night by my mother, who is a spectactular dramatic reader and has spoiled me for audiobooks.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 4:11 AM
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VL Burton is an anti-urbanist hack. There, I said it.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 5:48 AM
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As an adult, I really enjoyed reading many of these to my kids.
As a kid, the ones that are in this vein that stick out include the aforementioned Monster at the End of This Book, and also Amelia Bedelia. Her literalness was always hilarious.
posted by nushustu at 9:16 AM
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VL Burton is an anti-urbanist hack
Can't believe there's gonna be a fistfight in the children's section.
posted by mittens at 9:21 AM
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the swedish arts council announced yesterday that jon klassen has won this year's astrid lindgren memorial award.
"Through his subtle and evocative storytelling in words and pictures, Jon Klassen opens new perspectives on our place in the universe. What happens when a rock falls from the sky, when hats disappear or a skull begins living a life of its own? With precision, emotion and inventive wit, life's challenges of uncertainty and hopefulness are portrayed in an interplay of colour and form. Jon Klassen's brilliant tales stand out for their effortless elegance and ambiguous depth, where the reader becomes a co-creator."
posted by emmling at 10:45 AM
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Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris released a new picture book called The Future Book and came to my kid's school to read it aloud. As she's a 10 year old novel reader, I didn't think she would care but she said the presentation was excellent and hilarious and insisted I buy the book. It's pretty funny and absurd and great for reading aloud.
posted by vunder at 11:26 AM
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Burton's hallucinatory The Little House became part of my dream world, especially the elevated trains that got built around it. I am not joking. And my grandchild loved it too. I have no idea why.
posted by Peach at 2:32 PM
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Oh man I have opinions. My kid is only 1.5 so we're still on pretty simple books. They dont have to rhyme but if they do and have a rhythm then he dances a little while we read (Hand Hand Fingers Thumb, Hop on Pop, Car Car Truck Jeep).
Its ok if there's a moral to the story, he loves the Struwwelpeter (yes my partner is German), which is literally only a collection of stories with lessons, but the text rhymes and flows really well and the illustrations are different than his other books. (This is the one that makes the rounds on the internet every few months with the kid who sucks his thumbs and then they get cut off)
There are a few books that are absolutely terrible for me to read, luckily he only likes one of these alot. How to Catch a Daddysaurus - absolutely terrible. Apparently its part of a larger series, but we only have this book. The meter feels different for each line, the pictures dont make sense with the text, the rhyming is lazy. Its horrible to read. (extra laugh that one of the online reviews was appalled that the children use a computer in a room without an adult around, like thats really the worst part of the book).
I'm definitely noting which books have been recommended here. This is a great thread!
posted by LizBoBiz at 4:14 PM
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Its ok if there's a moral to the story, he loves the Struwwelpeter (yes my partner is German), which is literally only a collection of stories with lessons, but the text rhymes and flows really well and the illustrations are different than his other books.
I also read Struwwelpeter as a small child. It genuinely scarred me. But maybe there are censored versions that don't have illustrations of little girls with their fingers getting cut off and all the rest.
posted by Zumbador at 1:31 AM
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Oh, our favorite book right now is Little Wolf's First Howling and I love that this essay explains it as being about weirdness and playing with language. It's out of print and I've gone to some trouble to buy it second hand for gifts and I totally recommend it if you can find it.
posted by carolr at 6:28 AM
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Just about any kids' picture books seem great compared to the ones starring branded characters where nothing really happens. You know the ones. Somehow my kid always seems to pick these up at the library, I guess it's easy to have something she can recognize.
posted by grouse at 11:39 AM
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Also, I just added, no kidding, 17 books to the kid's library hold list, so thank you for all the mentions of stuff you like.
posted by grouse at 11:42 AM
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