A Basket of Books for Baby!

On Reading 12 Comments

I had baby showers last weekend and this weekend, and since everybody knows I’m a reader, I got a ton of books for Superfast Baby. In fact, the theme of the shower my mom & my high school friend threw was “books” and everybody brought a book to put in this really cute basket. Plus, my best friend from college, who is also a huge reader plus has an MA in Children’s Literature, made me a list of books that she and her kids really enjoyed. So, I’m going to give you the list of all the awesome books I got in honor of a book I read for work this weekend that prominently featured stuffed animals (and I’m the sorrier for it).

But before I dive into the list, check out this interview posted on Upper Fort Stewart, a favorite blog of mine, with the founder of Eco-Libris, talking about sustainable reading. I am definitely a big fan of used books and the library, but never really considered the environmental impact of book production. (Though I am putting a library together to sustain me through the Long Emergency.)

Superfast Baby Books

Animal Kisses
Sheep in a Jeep
God Must Really Love Opposites
Baby, Boo!
1 Baby, 2 Cats, 3 Trucks
Bread and Jam for Frances
Elmo’s Word–Babies!
Sesame Street Baby Party
Clap Hands (Helen Oxenbury)
Sesame Street Baby Love
On the Day You Were Born
The Big Picture Story Bible
Aesop’s Fables: A Classic Illustrated Edition (Arthur Rackham etc)
Birthday Monsters
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
The Going to Bed Book
But Not the Hippopotamus
Blue Hat, Green Hat
Duck by the Sea
Stand Up (Veggie Tales, which sort of terrify me, and even scarier is that I got 2 copies)
Thankfulness Song (another Veggie Tales)
Freight Train
The Grouchy Ladybug
My Little Word Book
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (Illustrated by Sanja Rescek)
Little Visits With God
Corduroy (a personal favorite of mine)
Goodnight, Moon
The Story of Noah’s Ark (an old one, handed down)
Oh, Baby, the Places You’ll Go!
The Tiny Seed
Mystery in Bugtown
Richard Scarry’s Lowly Worm Sniffy Book (and Superfast Baby also has an almost-complete Busytown set waiting till he or she is old enough to enjoy it–I’m only missing Huckle House)
The Random House Book of Easy-to-Read stories
10 Little Ladybugs
Tiny Bear’s Bible
Clumsy Crab
A Treasury of Bedtime Stories and Rhymes
How the Leopard Got its Spots
The Fire Engine Book
Richard Scarry’s Chipmunk’s ABCs
Richard Scarry’s Busiest Firefighters Ever
The Monster at the End of this Book (my favorite book from babysitting days)
Pat the Bunny
My First Animal Book

And some special books:
Bible Stories for Children, retold by Geoffrey Horn and Arthur Cavanaugh–this was given to my by my godmother, who was a friend of Arthur Cavanaugh’s, and it has inscriptions from both of them
James Herriot’s Treasury for Children–this was given to me by my paternal grandmother, Grandmere, who passed away in 1998
The Giving Tree–this was a gift to me from my maternal grandmother, Grandma, who passed away when I was 10

12 thoughts on “A Basket of Books for Baby!”

  3. I just wrote up blurb about Eco Libris for a post about several things. And I planted some trees!

    I don’t know how scary the Veggie Tales books are, but the videos will put songs in your head that will be stuck there forever. It leads to oddities like atheists going around signing “God Is Bigger Than the Boogeyman” and so forth.

  4. That is a lot of bible books, too many in my opinion, as a parent do you not have a responsibility to your children to allow them to contemplate religion? If so, should not other religious books be shown?

  5. Thanks for bringing that up. I don’t really like to get into controversial topics like politics and religion on this blog, but I will say that my husband and I intend to raise our child in the Christian faith–which is not necessarily the same as Christian culture (ie Veggie Tales). As someone who was raised in both the Christian faith and Christian culture, I do agree that it is vital for parents to allow their children the freedom to express doubts and explore options outside of Christianity–when they grow older. Childhood is not that time, developmentally speaking–and I would say that goes for whatever religion you follow, or even if you follow no religion at all. Young children need consistency, certainty, structure, and guidance, with freedom building as they grow in maturity. (I say this as a career babysitter/nanny with over 20 years experience.)

    However, Superfast Baby will also be exposed to his/her fair share of dragons, magic, Harry Potter and time travel, as well as stories and tales from other cultures and traditions from all over the world.

  6. I’m just reminded of the old Catholic adage, “give me the first six years of a child’s life and he is mine for life.”

    I’m not attempting to place this into the realm of controversy, and for purposes of full disclosure, I was raised within a Christian household and family and went to a private Christian school and am an agnostic (and paraphrasing the words of Bertrand Russell to the man on the street I am an atheist, philosophically I am an agnostic), so yes, it is possible for children raised within a religious methodology to break with their parents, church, and peers’ thoughts and have some of their own, it just seems that by your choice of phrasing of “other cultures and traditions” you are setting up a “us versus them” mentality.

    I have a wonderful book I bought for my daughter, World Atlas of Religions that shoes the cultural influences and history of certain peoples religions throughout time.

    In further interests of full disclosure I feel religion can be harnessed for more ill in the world than good, rationality and reason are to be relied upon and teaching this to children within the framework mentioned by you above has nothing to do with religion, so using that framework, Christianity really has no place to provide consistency, certainty, structure and guidance (as I feel it provides none of these whatsoever).

  7. Unless, you know, it were true.

    By which I mean, if you believe something is true and good for your children you have a moral obligation to share it with them. Christians that step back and let their children decide, as described above, are kind of lying to themselves. Which is really the same viewpoint as described above, isn’t it? Believing choice amongst belief systems is true and good you allow your children to have it.

    Um, in a more typical vein for myself: Veggie-Tales songs! Aaah!!

  8. I do not believe you can be arrogant enough to believe anything to be completely “true.” This goes for the scientific “laws” as well as religion.

  9. Pingback: Children’s Books and Christianity « Super Bibliophile

Comments are closed.