Inspired by my friend Jenny's recent blog post on books she's read in 2021, I've decided to resume the book reports I started several years ago (*gulp* that would be 8)(how in the world can this be? It seems like it's been awhile, like a few months, or a year or two, or ... certainly not 8 years😳).
Anyway. These book reports will be labeled Book Report (ha yes I know that's original) and will be archived under the page Home Library Picks which I recently re-added to this blog's Pages gadget. This will be helpful for me and hopefully others. I appreciate Jenny's recommendations and have already ordered a few of them from our library.
For this post, I'm going to list a few of my favorite children's authors. Choose your favorites with discernment; some of these authors have books which I prefer not to have in my library, bc some are just plain dumb, imho, and I don't like reading dumb books so why would I put them in my library, huh?
Picture Books
Mo Willems - Piggie & Elephant, Knuffle Bunny
James Stevenson - goofy and fun
Steven Kellogg - Pinkerton, tall tales, other random stories; excellent pictures
Alexandra Day - wordless; excellent pictures about a dog named Carl who babysits
Henry & Wende Devlin -Cranberry series: Cranberry is a quaint seaside village in Maine
Cynthia Rylant - Henry & Mudge, Mr. Putter
Liesel Moak Skorpen - probably my favorite children's author as her characters have phenomenal imaginations, and I see my kids - and me - so clearly in her characters. We Were Tired Of Living In A House, Christina Katherina and the Box, Andrew Henry's Meadow. She has a few more books but, regretfully, not many.
Chapter Books
Joan Hiatt Harlow - historical fiction
Jean Craighead George - My Side of The Mountain series of three - nature, wilderness adventures (also picture books)
Will Hobbs - wilderness survival adventures
Gary Paulsen - Hatchet, other wilderness survival adventures
Walt Morey - Gentle Ben (one of my favorites), other nature/wilderness adventures
Wilson Rawls - Where the Red Fern Grows, Summer of the Monkeys
Sam Campbell - Living Forest series - non-fiction accounts of Sam's wild animal pets in a wilderness sanctuary
Ralph Moody - Little Britches series - Ralph's autobiography of growing up in CO
Sterling North - Rascal - true story of Sterling's pet raccoon
Marie McSwigan - Snow Treasure - based on a true event of children who sneaked gold bouillon on sleds past Nazi sentries during WW2
John D. Fitzgerald - The Great Brain series - fiction, funny, and fun
Patricia St. John - probably my favorite kids' author - Treasures of the Snow, Rainbow Garden, Where the River Begins, and more
Walter Farley - The Black Stallion series. A lot of horse!
Marguerite Henry - all horse stories
Robert Peck - Soup & Rob series - pretty wild, unrealistic adventures of two 9/10 yo boys but also very funny which got Josh reading so they made the list.
Although I met some of these authors in college, I discovered most of my (and my kids') favorite books/authors by accident, meaning I found them second-hand and was completely smitten (case in point: Liesel Moak Skorpen, Patricia St. John, Joan Hiatt Harlow).
I've also stumbled on great books at the library and they've become family favorites, ie: James Stevenson, Harry & Wende Devlin, Steven Kellogg, Alexandra Day.
And then other people have recommended books which have become favorites, ie pretty sure A. Joyce introduced us to Mo Willems back when she used to come out and read to the kids.
A word of caution. I ran across We Were Tired Of Living In A House at our local library once; it was an updated version and it. was. awful. The original realistic pictures of the kids with their adorable facial expressions were replaced by these gawdy comic-book-look drawings that completely destroyed the beauty and appeal of the book. Make sure you get the 1969 version... or the newly re-released one (July 2021), with Doris Burns as the illustrator.
I reserve the right to grow this list as I remember more authors/books, but that's all for now!
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