Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Picture Books Kids Love

In my years as  preschool and Kindergarten teacher, parent, and grandparent I've read over a thousand books to hundreds of kids. The one book most of them have loved is Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are." Except for two little girls who were frightened by the monsters, all the other children have wanted to hear it over and over again. 
But what makes this book so popular? I guess it's partly because all kids can identify with misbehaving and getting in trouble but having their parents love them anyway, and with using their imaginations. Another factor is the great illustrations. 
In my experience, the majority of the picture books kids love are either written and illustrated by the same person or by an author/illustrator team that often works together. Of course there are exceptions, but this is the case at least half the time.

1 comment:

Kathleen said...

You are right about children going back over and over again to the same authors/illustrators. My Kindergarten children ask for books by the author quite often--can we read a Jan Brett book? Are there any more Eric Carle books that we haven't read? My own kids also would gravitate toward authors they were familiar with--We always came home from the library with several Bill Peet books. We need to support current authors, so they will be added to that list of favorites...buy a book for a child!