read with me, mama

I am slightly obsessed with finding the perfect children's book.  With two toddlers, we read a lot of books.  There are the commercialized character books (Diego & Disney) that often times my kids love and want to read over and over.  There are the crazy artistic books that I bought because I only loved the illustrations, but the kids are soo not into them.  Then, there is the place where thoughtful story and design meet in the perfect middle:  a book both kids and mama loves to read.  

My goal is to pass these books, these stories, these messages and ultimately, these memories, down to my children when they have a house full of children ready to read and learn.  There are the classics, like Carle, Silverstein and Seuss which get a lot of play but we also love picking up fun books whenever we travel.  We have children's books in French, German, Dutch, and Spanish.  Not that I can read most of them, but we make up our own stories to the illustrations.  One of our favorites is Jakkes een spinn!, a great book we found in Maastricht, Netherlands.  A story all about a spider and his human family.  A turned-upside-down point of view on family and a wonderful story about acceptance and loving even the creepies.  We read a lot of french books since we are a true Franco-American family, but one of my favorites is a book called Prout de Mammouth.  A hilarious book about how everyone farts.  We laugh so hard every time.

The Big Question, by Wolf Erlbruch, was a gift to Mila from her cousin, Oscar and what a gift it was.  This sweet book with awesome illustration covers the subject of "why are we here?", but the best part is that in the back, there is a log so that over the years, you can journal your kid's (funny and cute) responses to the question.  

Then there is the collection of books that I have on display in our family room.  They are beautifully vintage and while we do read them, quite frankly, I just love the look of them on our shelf.  The first one, Peppermint Fences, was an acquisition from my mom.  She read this as a child and after a bit of research I found the rest of the collection on Amazon from used book dealers.  I love the Internet.