Back in March I posted about some of my favorite classic picture books, which were all published before 2000. Now I’m going to share some new classics – published after 2000. Some are Caldecott Medal winners (an annual award given by the American Library Association to an illustrator of the “most distinguished” picture book of the year), but not all of them. If you haven’t read these new classic picture books with your child, I encourage you to check them out. These are purely for enjoyment – I don’t have any lesson suggestions for you this time. Sometimes books are just fun.
A Cute Kitten
Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes
Kitten’s First Full Moon takes place at night, and as such all of the illustrations are simple black and white. There is no technology, no trends, to date the book – it could have been published yesterday or a hundred years ago. This book is absolutely charming (I will say this about another book later, and I usually don’t like to repeat words like this but there really isn’t a better word to describe them). A kitten sees the full moon and thinks it’s a bowl of milk in the sky, just waiting for it. The problem, of course, lies in how to reach it. The kitten tries to lick it, but a firefly lands on her tongue. She tries to jump in the air, but only falls and gets hurt. She chases it but never gets closer, and even climbing a tree doesn’t help her reach the bowl of milk. She looks down sadly and sees the moon’s reflection in a pond, and thinking it’s a bigger bowl of milk she jumps out of the tree and is disappointed yet again. As you may guess, she returns home and finds a bowl of milk waiting for her on the porch.
Creative Inspiration
This is a follow-up to The Dot, where a girl named Vashti learns, as the author often tells people, to “make a mark and see where it takes you.” At the end of the book, she tells a boy who says he can’t draw to make a line, and after he makes a squiggly line she makes him sign it (a call back to the experience she herself has in art class at the beginning of the book). In ish, we learn that the boy’s name is Ramon, and he draws a lot of pictures. When his older brother makes fun of his drawings, he crumples them up and throws them away. Later he finds that his sister has taken his drawings out of the trash and they are all hanging up in her bedroom. This may not look like a tree, but it looks “tree-ish.” That doesn’t look like a cup, but it looks “cup-ish.” Ramon’s sister’s makeshift museum inspires him to keep drawing after all.
Okay, I lied. No I didn’t, I changed my mind. I can’t talk about this one without recommending it to be used to help people (not just kids) to let go of the idea of perfection. I picked it up on a whim one day because I grew up with my dad saying things like, “I’ll be home at 5:15-ish.” I fell in love with the book because it really spoke to the perfectionist Aries part of me. Allowing myself to live a life of “ish” instead of striving for illusive “perfection” has been very liberating, and being creative is so much more fun now.
A Lovely Old Zookeeper
A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead, illustrated by Erin E. Stead
This book, written and illustrated by a married couple, is simply charming. There’s an old-fashioned style in the illustrations, which works perfectly with Amos McGee being a very old man. A family is never mentioned, but I imagine him being the perfect grandfather. First we see what Amos does at the zoo every day as he visits all of his animal friends. He plays chess with the elephant, and races the tortoise, and sits quietly with the penguin. When he wakes up sick and can’t go to work one day, his friends ride the bus to his house to take care of him. The story is very sweet, and I love sharing it at storytime.
Amos McGee Misses the Bus, the sequel, came out eleven years later, and somehow I didn’t hear about it until a few months ago. I think my excitement came out in some kind of high-pitched squeal. In this book, Amos misses the bus to work and is afraid he’ll have to miss out on his plans with his animal friends, but they do his chores at the zoo and in the end they all go to the beach together. It’s just as charming as the first book, and a worthy follow-up.
A Beloved Toy
Don’t Forget Dexter! by Lindsay Ward
What happens when a little boy named Max leaves his favorite toy, a dino named Dexter T. Rexter, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office? Dexter asks for the reader’s help finding Max, and eventually gets himself into a panic attack thinking Max is never coming back for him. He thinks he’s not as good as “cars and trucks and things that go” and even details all the things he’s missing, like that he can’t even make “cool revving sounds.” In the end, Max returns to the waiting room to rescue Dexter from his despair. I don’t think I can adequately express how much I love this book or why, so just go check it out from your library, or buy it, because it’s awesome.
Check out Miss Michelle’s Book Nook
Miss Michelle shares her book recommendations each month on the In Our Homeschool blog. Find links to all of her posts here.
Miss Michelle is the sister of Kristen, who writes this blog. She has a daughter who is 9 and a son who is 5. They are not home-schooled, but Miss Michelle is super supportive and proud of her sister for doing it. She has been a full-time Children’s Librarian for over 15 years and loves to recommend her favorite books. You can follow her on Goodreads, where she keeps track of books she has read for storytime, at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/170007385-miss-michelle.
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