One of my dearest oldest friends is about to have her first baby and I couldn’t be more excited. Now, obviously the baby shower that was envisioned is out of the question but sending something special is still a must.
In my experience it seems that people choose books for baby showers a lot like they choose the clothes. Impractical, fussy, not really designed for everyday use. Noone wants to button 56 buttons up on pajamas at 4 am, Karen, I don’t care if that’s what you did with your babies 500 years ago. Oh yes, please tell me more about your horrific birth story and how sugar is the devil.
So I set about picking the top ten books I think every house absolutely needs. I chose them based on which books my children enjoyed the best as babies and that are still enjoyed regularly in our home today.
This was a hard choice and I also opted to put only one book from each author. Honestly I could make a top 50 of essentials but maybe that is excessive.
I couldn’t get great photos of this because Willow was too excited at seeing all her favourite books in one place. Normally I seperate them throughout the house strategically. Of the hundreds of books we have, these ones are always the top requests. So she kept on grabbing them off my photo spread and forcing me to read them again and again. It took over an hour. I gave up trying to photograph them all, they’re pretty worn looking anyway. Here is my list in order of dire necessity.
The Top 10 Best Books for a Baby Shower: picked to read (and not just to treasure)
1.”I Took the Moon for a Walk” Carolyn Curtis & Alison Jay @barefootbooks
2. “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” Eric Carle @philomel @penguin
3. “Go to Sleep Little Farm” Mary Lyn Ray Christopher Silas Neal @houghtonmifflinharcourt
4. “Mortimer” Robert Munsch & Michael Martchenko @annick
5. “Oh No, George” Chris Haughton @candlewick
6. “We Love Each Other” Yusuke Yonezu @minedition
7. “Slinky Malinki Open the Door” Lynley Dodd @puffin
8. “The Going to Bed Book” Sandra Boynton @littlesimon
9. “Alligator Pie” by Dennis Lee illustrated by Sandy Nichols @harpercollins
10. “Claire Beaton’s Nursery Rhymes” @barefootbooks
11. “Cats” Matthew Van Fleet & Brian Stanton @simonandschuster
A further note. Many of these authors have books that I would consider equally excellent, I was just narrowing it down. For example most of the classic Munsch books “The Paper Bag Princess,” “Thomas’s Snowsuit,” “David’s Father.” Or many of the Eric Carle books, “Brown Bear Brown Bear” are also favourites in this house. Perhaps I will make a list of my top fifty eventually. For now, this list is a good starter pack for any baby’s layette.
Read With River 