Booked!

'Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.' 

I was reminded of this quote by Neil Gaiman when Divya contacted me to pen a post on some of our favorite children's books. My four year old is an avid reader who loves to read anything from 'Clifford the Big Red Dog' to a blender instruction manual (true story!), so picking out a few of her most-loved books is not easy.

While 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar', 'Goodnight Moon', the Olivia series etc have been through repeated readings in our house, nothing is more dog-eared than the Mouse books by Ellen Stoll Walsh. I first found 'Mouse Paint' at our local library when Saachi was two. The story is about the adventures of three mice having fun with paint while outwitting a cat. The book also introduces concepts of colour and what happens when primary colours are mixed. With big bright collage illustrations and just a single line on every page, this turned out to be something that Saachi easily understood and enjoyed when read to. 

Her fondness for the simple narrative and colorful pictures in this book led me to look for more by the same author and I was happy to find 'Mouse Count' and 'Mouse Shapes' that follow similar themes about mice outsmarting their predators while playing with numbers and shapes. 

Though its been more than two years since we discovered these delightful stories, Saachi is yet to get bored of them. These much-loved books have been thumbed through many, many bedtimes - so much so that they are nearly in tatters but she refuses to get rid of them. 






I highly recommend these simple, colourful books for your little ones. Watch out for the cat!





Congrats to Divya, Abhay and this blog for sharing Abhay's reading journey with us for four years! I hope to enjoy many more years of posts and suggestions on reading material and resources. Happy Birthday and a very Happy New Year!