Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? by Bill Martin Jr.

My children were infants when I started to reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? to them. Each page of this book features a different animal and each animal "sees" the animal on the next page. The colorful collage art work of Eric Carle brings the animals to life. When I read this book to my kids, each animal has a different voice. The animal's reply to the "what do you see" question, the animal starts off by making its animal sound. In other words, brown bear doesn't just say "I see a ...", he says "GRRRRRR, I see a ..." Our favorite is the goldfish who's sound is just puckered lips smacking together. I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to start reading to their infant. Every baby I know gets this book as a present from me for some event during his/her first year. And, the enjoyment of it will last well through toddlerhood. With it's easy to memorize lines, before you know it, your child will be "reading" along with you.

A Crack in the Track by W. Rev Awdry

During our last visit to the bookstore, my daughter picked this book of the shelve. "Mommy, can we get this one?" she asked. "No honey, we have that one already," I replied. We had bought this book for my son when his obsession with Thomas the Train started. He was somewhere between the ages of 1 & 2. It was his favorite book for a long time. We all had it memorized and so it seems like an appropriate book to start with.

A Crack in the Track is a short (very short) story about how the trains in Sodor deal with a broken track. The passengers are shuffled around from train to bus and back to train before happily arriving at their destination. It is told in rhyme and is very easily remembered. This board book is a great bedtime story for any Thomas loving toddler. Beware: You will be reading it again, and again, and again.

After the brief discussion with my daughter in the bookstore, I ran home to check the shelves. How could she not have seen it? Sadly, I couldn't find the book. At the same time I realized it was gone, I also knew I would be heading back to the bookstore to buy another copy. Though my son had long outgrown the story, he would need a copy to read to his children over and over and over again. After all, don't we all await the day when our children are put through the same tortures of parenthood that they put us through?

Are you kidding me?

As if I didn't have enough to do already, I've decided to try blogging. I have a very large collection of children's books and I would love to share it with others. So, I will try very hard to write a review of each book that I have. We'll see how it goes.