An annotated list of books I bought for my friend having a baby

One of my best and longest friends and his wife are expecting their first child. Unfortunately, they do not live in a community that has Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a book gifting program started by Dolly Parton that delivers free book every month from birth to age five to children in communities across the country, so I decided to start them off with a small collection of books.

Check if the Imagination Library is available in your community.

Let me start by making it clear that this is not a list of the best children’s literature or a list of books everyone should own. This is merely a list of the handful of books that both have had a unique impact on my family and might be something my friends would like.

Regardless, here’s why my wife and I picked the books we picked and a list of some books we might still send their way.

Curious George and the Puppies

I knew I wanted to send a Curious George book, because my son, Henry, and I have spent dozens and dozens of hours reading these classic stories. Initially, I wanted to send one of the books from the Curious George cannon.

Oh?!? You didn’t know…? Yes, there is a Curious George cannon. Only seven of the Curious George books were written by the original authors, Margret & H. A. Rey.

1. Curious George
2. Curious George Takes a Job
3. Curious George Rides a Bike
4. Curious George Gets a Medal
5. Curious George Flies a Kite
6. Curious George Learns the Alphabet
7. Curious George Goes to the Hospital

The rest of the book say “Margret & H. A. Rey’s” across the top and are written and illustrated by other people.

Sidenote: Margret’s name only appears on Hospital and Kite from the cannon, but appears on all non-canonical Curious George books.

Also, in case you didn’t know, Curious George has an amazing backstory, involving escaping from the Nazi.

Final fun fact: Curious George was originally called Curious Zozo in the UK, because they didn’t want a monkey to share names with the King.

While that is all great information, it doesn’t explain why we included this particular book. We picked this book because it was the first book Henry really cared about and understood. I used to read this to him a lot in the morning when we were eating breakfast.

Tip: Henry didn’t actually like being read to as a kid. Somewhere we heard, “Read to them while they’re in their highchair eating. They’re a captive audience.” So that’s what we did, and it seemed to worked.

I remember Henry mimicking the Man with the Yellow Hat’s shocked face, when he sees that George let the dogs loose. It was the first time he really interacted with a book and engaged in pretend around the story. It was fascinating to watch.

If I Built a Car by Chris Van Dusen

This book is great for so many reasons:

1. It’s fun. The car he builds is ridiculous and is filled with things kids love.
2. It’s simple to read. The sing-songy writing almost makes you want to sing it. By this point, I would say I have about 70% of it memorized.
3. It’s great for pretend. When we’re reading it, Henry loves talking about what he would do different or what his car would be like.
4. The art is fantastic. It simultaneously has a very 50s feel and a very modern feel.

But it’s also a great gift, because it is the perfect introduction into the world of Chris Van Dusen.

First, there are other books in the “If I Built a…” series, including: If I Built a School and If I Built a House. But then Van Dusen also has a number of other series that are equally good, though they are for a bit older child than the “If I Built a…” series.

From A Camping Spree with Mr. Magee

The first is the Mr. Magee series, which follows Mr. Magee and his dog, Dee, as they do ridiculous things. As you can see the illustration follows in a similar style as If I Built a Car, and the writing follows the same sing-songy style.

From Mr. Magee, you can head over to the Mercy Watson series. This nine or ten-book series is illustrated by Chris Van Dusen, but is written by Kate DiCamillo.

The Mercy Watson books are 70 to 90-page chapter books. Henry and I binge read the whole series (both the Mercy Watson books and the spin-off Tales from Deckawoo Drive books). We loved them because they are zany and amusing. DiCamillo also does a great job of bringing in characters across the series. All the books feel new and unique, but there are also a ton of references to previous books. It’s like reading a child’s version of Arrested Development.

From there you can go to other Chris Van Dusen books:

• The Circus Ship
• Randy Riley’s Really Big Hit
• President Taft is Stuck in the Bath (illustrated by Chris Van Dusen)

And then when the kid gets older, you can move down the Kate DiCamillo route, including:

• The Tale of Despereaux
• Because of Winn Dixie
• The Magician’s Elephant

Let’s Go for a Drive: An Elephant and Piggie Book

Mo Willems is one of the best and most prolific children’s authors out there. He started his career as a writer for Sesame Street. He wrote on the show for about 10 years, winning six Emmy awards. After Sesame Street, he wrote on numerous other children’s shows as he started his career in books.

Since launching his publishing career with Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus in 2003, Willems has created three successful series that have won nearly every major honor in children’s literature, including the Caldecott Honor in 2004, 2005 and 2008 and the Geisel Medal in 2008 and 2009.

• The Elephant and Piggie series
• The Pigeon series
• The Knuffle Bunny series

In 16 years, Willems has produced 37 books across these three series alone, and every single one of them is wonderful.

It’s the characters that do it. They are incredibly simple, but also deep and rich. Henry loves all of them and understands them as unique characters with unique attributes.

For a good year, when we’d read a Pigeon book, I’d act like a didn’t like the Pigeon. Ya know, because he was always causing problems, wanting to drive the bus or stay up late or not take a bath, so that was a thing. At some point in this, we bought Henry a Pigeon stuffed animal. One night Henry snuck in to my room while I was sleeping and put the Pigeon in with me, so we could cuddle and be friends.

Since then, I have liked the Pigeon.

The best part is its all fake. Henry knows we are just doing a goof. He knows that the stuffed animal is not real and that I neither hated the Pigeon before or came to some epiphany because his stuffed animal was in my bed. But just like the characters in the book, we have committed to simple, yet meaningful scenario.

Additional bonus for Mo Willems: He is an outspoken advocate of inclusion and diversity and has helped raise a ton of money to help organizations fighting for these values.

Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go

Honestly, I have a love-hate relationship Richard Scarry. Busytown is a weird place, but Henry loves looking through this book. Sometimes we read the incredibly weird story about the pig family’s trip. Other times we just flip through and talk about the cars.

I think we have like three or four oversized Richard Scarry books, and Henry has spent hours looking through each of them.

Bye-Bye Big Bad Bullybug

Ed Emberley’s Bye-Bye Big Bad Bullybug made the list for two reasons.

1. It’s a light, fun book that’s different than everything else on the list. The page cutouts that reveal the bullybug add to the suspense and exciting. Then the surprise ending is hilarious and fitting.
2. Also, Henry just got into the Ed Emberley drawing books, and he loves them. The first one we got was How to Draw Weirdos…like the Big Bad Bullybug. We have also bought his Make a World drawing book.

Ed Emberley also have a number of other books similar to Big Bad Bullybug, including Nighty Night Little Green Monster and Glad Monster, Sad Monster.

The Pout-Pout Fish

The final book I sent to my friend was The Pout-Pout Fish written by Deborah Diesen and illustrated by Dan Hanna. Much like the Willems books or Curious George, the Pout-Pout Fish is a series of books about a simple, but relatable character. They also include some fantastic words.

Honestly, I don’t have strong opinions about this book. My wife picked this one. Maybe I’ll have her add to this list at some point to explain why she liked it so much.

Some Other Books

Those are the first six books we sent. I’m going to be sending some more. Save for If I Built a Car, I didn’t include any Imagination Library books on this list. That’s because I am currently producing a documentary about the Imagination Library and have a huge collection of books from the Imagination Library that I am using in the production. After we finish the film, I’ll send some of the duplicates out their way. If I were to pick some books from the collection to send them now, here’s what they would be:

1. The Snowy Day — A classic and important work of children’s literature. It was one of the first mainstream picture books to have a black main character.
2. Pretend — I just love this book about a kid and his dad playing pretend. Also, I have met the author, and she is a wonderful person.
3. One Cool Friend — This is one of our favorite Imagination Library book. I love penguins, it has a ridiculous grown-up child, and there is a twist at the end.
4. Coat of Many Colors — Of course.
5. The Gruffalo — This book is smart, well written, sarcastic and amazing.
6. Good Night Gorilla — This is one of the few books in the collection that has no words. But the pictures tell a clear story and the lack of words allow for the parent to make up a story.

I’m sure there are at least a dozen other Imagination Library books that are regular reads for us, but those six are a good start.