I wanted to continue my High Five Series with one of my favorite things…children’s books! I’m uniquely qualified to share this list with you as I’ve been a kid who enjoyed books, have raised a six and a three year-old that love books, and work for an organization that is all about getting high quality books into the hands of kids. In fact, one of my main roles has been to evaluate our book inventories for our sites throughout the state and find new, diverse and high quality children’s books to improve our collection. So without further ado (and just in time for Black Friday!) I present my top five children’s books (with bonuses of course!).

  1. We Are in a Book! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) – I love the Elephant & Piggie Series! I have definitely begged my kids to read them at times because I love them so much, and “We Are in a Book!” is the first one I read and my favorite of the whole series. We have a whole shelf in our house for all 25 books in this series 🙂
  2. Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match / Marisol McDonald no combina – I LOVE this book! It is a beautiful story with a young mixed-race girl as the main character and how she stays true to herself. Not only is this book bilingual in English and Spanish…there are Spanish words in the English text and vice versa to really capture how a lot of families speak in their homes. I recommend any book by Monica Brown but cannot recommend this one highly enough.
  3. Tiger in My Soup – Beautiful pictures, my favorite animal, an imaginative boy and a fun story make this book a winner! I buy multiple copies of this book every year at work so that I can give it to as many of our programs as possible.
  4. Big Red Barn – My favorite book when I was a kid and I still really enjoy reading it to my little ones. My parents said I had it memorized word for word before I could even recognize the words on the page and would correct them any time they got it wrong 🙂
  5. My Brother Charlie – What a beautiful and touching story. I knew nothing of this book and decided to read it while I was visiting one of our programs and started to tear up right in the middle of the visit. I love the focus on her brother’s strengths rather than his disability and think this is an amazing story for all kids to read.

Bonus – The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name – Our kids love this Bible. It is a wonderful and age-appropriate way to introduce them to our faith and follows a beautiful path as it flows from story to story. The illustrations are terrific as well and it allows for great conversation and questions as we’re reading.

Bonus, Bonus(!) – What’s the Difference?: Being Different Is Amazing & I Wonder: Celebrating Daddies Doin’ Work – Two awesome books by one of my favorite fatherhood advocates: Doyin Richards. I had some great conversations with my son about race after the “What’s the Difference?” book and of course love any book that celebrates fatherhood.

So what are some of your favorites? Please feel free to share your favorite kids books in the comments as well.

This is fatherhood…