Baby Preschool Books

This is apparently a classic camp song - not one I ever heard growing up, though.

My nieces request this book a *minimum* of once a week (and usually, once they request it, they want me to read it over and over again to boot!), and we love it every time. Then they often want me to help them reenact the story - I'll be the bear, then they'll be the bear, then the teddy bear will be the bear....

If you're paying attention as you read it, you can even see the various members of the family change their mood as the story goes on and they get hit with various forms of minor disasters.

My 3 year old son loves this book. When we go for a walk around the neighborhood, he wants to pretend that we are going on a "bear hunt" and we recite the book. Great book for imagination.

Quite simply a children's classic. My 2.5year old loves this book. We also recommend checking out the Michael Rosen reading of this book on You Tube.

I can't imagine not having this in the board book version with my next child! I actually found my copy at Potterybarnkids and I was so excited and so was my child the first time we read it. It's simply so classic, it totally a read-a-loud story every page has some new exciting nature noise to sound out and the repetition is perfect for little ears. I started reading this to my daughter around 18mos and a year later she still loves it! A must for toddler libraries!

I loved this book and song as a child...so I thought that I would get it for my little one. Well it came and the pages are in reverse order and upside down...oh well.

I got this when I was pregnant with my son, and I loved it. I especially loved the encouragement to read to him while I was pregnant. I was amazed to see that some reviewers gave it low stars for being too small. Since when does that matter?

And I guess you have to be a Seuss fan, because there are a lot of references to Seuss characters, but I loved that. Thanks for a great book!

While not written by Seuss, the prose is jaunty and fun. However, the book is TINY! It's definitely a "gift book" size and not something you'll be able to pick up and read to your vision-impaired newborn. I'll buy Cat in the Hat next time.

Oh, Baby the Places You'll Go makes a great gift for expectant mothers and fathers. The forward to the books explains how reading to babies in utero affects them. The story takes bits and pieces of Dr. Seuss favorites and combines them to create an adorable story about what lies ahead for the new baby and the anticipation that parents are feeling. It might even bring a tear to your eye!

I first bought and read this book (in utero) to my first born, my daughter. I also read it, in utero, to my second child, my son, 3 years later. This book was a beautiful way for me, as the father, to connect to my child in utero. I also found it to be a way for my wife and I to build intimacy while she was carrying our child. As I read over her stomach, the bond was beginning - both with her and my child.

Other reviews I have read on this book have said that it serves no use once the baby is born. Just the other night my daughter and I found the book. I told my daughter, who is now 4 1/2 years old, that I had read this book to her when she was in Mommy's stomach. She said, "awww, Daddy, can you read it to me again?" I found it to be such a wonderful reminder of that special moment that I had, looking forward to her birth.

I highly recommend this book and I continue to give it to FATHERS as a way for them to begin that bonding time with their expecting wife and child to come.

Dear Baby,

Me wife got this book from a friend who's name was Brook.
Read it and breed it and enjoy she said while she cooked; So we got really busy one-sy, two-sy, and three-sy all in one nightsy we did.
You will be bornsy about nine monthsy after we sealed the deedsy, and daddy slept wellski after we mades they I did.

I shall read this book to an embryo in utero you see, and maybe I'll do it while's eating for free. Your brain will be insane with all the verbage you'll hear. Soon you'll bounce while I bald and tell bad jokes in your ear. Those wrinkles I receive you'll give me for free. One-ski, Two-ski, I see more-ski before I forty, OH DEAR. My dad-ski warned me of all the trouble you'll cause. He said, "You'll get a child who will grey and shave you like me." I said, "A, I'm not grey, but I occasionally take a rolaids before I take my wife for a jump in the Hay, Hay Hay."

In the end the book claims you'll be smarter and a better farter if I read to you this day. I'll do it I say, just keep you little pee pee at bay, and promise not to spray....

Bottom Line: Great little book. Cute read it to your child in utero and watch the brain grow. I had to use the word embryo with utero, but your childs not an embryo.

I just love this book, its addictive! When choosing a book to read my daughter before bed I usually end up picking this one!

Great for pre-schoolers. Some of the rhymes are a bit forced but it is charming nonetheless. A very fun read!

This has become one of our favorite books for our 6 mo old son. Everyone thinks its funny when we read it, including him. If only he could eat the pages!

It bores my son after a couple of weeks and he's not yet three. At first though, he did really like it. Cute rhymes that are easy to remember, and he loved screaming the responses at first.

A favorite read-aloud for toddlers and preschoolers! The simple questions, cadence and rhyme make it easy to read and remember. The board book version is excellent for little hands learning how to handle books.

My Big Truck Book (Priddy Bicknell Big Ideas for Little People)

Great book for little boys who love trucks. Sturdy, good pictures and they learn all different names

My toddler loves this book, but I'm not sure how age-appropriate it is. I hadn't even heard of the names they call some of the trucks. They include just about everything! Great picture book, though!

These books are a great deal for hours of fun! My little guys looks at the pictures over and over and doesn't ever seem to get tired of hearing the names of all the pictures. These books have been great for his vocabulary as he tries to say all the words too!

My 18 month old and his 12 month old cousin both love this book. We are pleased at the number and variety of vehicles inside! The pictures are beautiful and clear and give us a lot to look at and talk about. We also bought My Big Animal Book and love it, too.

From the time my son first learned to talk, he has shown a fierce curiosity about what things are called, especially the things he sees when we are driving around. I was so pleased with Priddy's My Big Animal Book (Priddy Bicknell Big Ideas for Little People) that I picked up My Big Truck Book to help him identify various vehicles as well as to build his growing vocabulary. The book was a tremendous success on both levels.

The book features large, sturdy pages that catalog a variety of farm, construction, rescue, and other vehicles. The photos are large and colorful, and never fail to capture my son's attention. Between this book and My Big Animal Book, my son's vocabulary and understanding of the world around him increased by leaps and bounds. I still remember the first time we drove by a construction site and I heard him shouting "Backhoe! Mini excavator! Dump truck!" The book also allowed us to use his curiosity about vehicles and fascination with the pictures to teach him about the vehicles' functions, colors, and sizes.

My son is two years old now and more interested in storybooks, plus he knows the vehicles in this book front to back. That doesn't keep him from taking this book off the shelf time after time just to enjoy seeing his favorite trucks, tractor, and construction equipment.

I highly recommend this durable, colorful, and inexpensive book to all parents of curious toddlers. As teaching aids go, My Big Truck Book has proven far more effective than many a high-priced electronic gadget or DVD.

I bought this as a gift from my son to his Daddy for Fathers Day and they both love it.

My daughter likes all of Karen Katz's lift the flap books, but this one isn't the greatest of topics for a 1-yr-old. Plus it perpetuates gender stereotypes. Even though the kid in the story is gender-neutral, the daddy is all about tools and building stuff.

My son LOVES this book. It's strictly a book my husband reads to him and you can hear him shriek with excitement when this book comes out in the bedtime reading rotation. Unfortunately, the book arrived with one of the lift-up flaps torn off. Otherwise this book is great!

Great book for father's to read to their little ones. Fun flaps to lift. My kids bring this book to Daddy to read to them. It's special time with him.

We love Karen Katz's books at our house -- the illustrations are adorable, they're just the right length for our 1-year-old son's attention span, and he LOVES to open the little flaps.

Just two small complaints:

First, I really wish the flaps on these books were a little sturdier. My son has already ripped one off. *Sniffle* (This goes for ALL lift-the-flap board books, by the way!)

Second, has anyone else noticed that the first page reads, "first we saw the wood," and the next page says, "Then we measure the wood"? This drives my husband INSANE! Every time he reads this to our son, he reads the second page first, so that our son learns he should measuring things before he cuts them, not vice versa ;)

My 18 month old son loves this book! He watched me do the movements as I read it and now he does them on his own when I read the book! Very cute and interactive.

In this book, various animals and children move parts of their body and encourage other children to do so.

Eric Carle is truly a master of this kind of text. Each spread follows the same repetitive structure - "I'm a $ANIMAL and I can $VERB my $BODYPART - can you? I can do it!" - which makes it very suitable both for young children learning to speak and older children figuring out how to read.

The only part I don't like is at the end, when the little boy says to his parrot (in a neat turnaround) "I am I, and I can wiggle my toe". It doesn't sound very idiomatic to me - I would say, in normal speech "I am me", or perhaps (in the form followed in the rest of the book) "I am a child" or "I am a person" or "I am a human".

This book is also, obviously good to encourage kids to move during a rainy-day storytime, or to let them move if they always are fidgeting during storytime.

This is an excellent, fun book. My 2yr 7 month daughter mimics each of the animals. Its a lot of interactive fun!

My little boy started doing all the motions at about 10 months and now loves to read this book by himself, all the motions are great for learning body parts and animals.

We LOVE this book, we play out the little roles of each animal and along with it learn the parts of the body and the movements. We have a lot of fun with this and laugh every time we read it together.

This book has excellent and very easy to follow lessons in each of the Elements of Art. All pages are color and there is an illustration of each lesson. I have already used a few of the ideas with my art students (I teach elementary art K-6.) I would recommend this book to any art teacher, teacher or parent who is interested in art education.

I have a 5yo who is ambitious with her pencil, and the things she creates are amazing. So I am taking it to another step for her. She is gifted in art and has amazing abilities, and the book helps any mother begin to teach her child about lines, shadows, curves...just copy the sheets and practice over and over again.

I order How To Teach Art To Children. It was inexpensive; the book arrived in excellent shape and arrived much quicker than I thought it would. Completely satisfied.

I love this book...It's very simple and well organized. Plus, everything is in full color! The artwork examples are large, the directions are extremely easy, and the layout is great. The printing is also of very high quality. My favorite part is that I can quickly flip through the pages and visually pick out projects within minutes, without having to read through a lot of text.

A few of the projects are kind of boring to me, but my younger students enjoyed them nonetheless. I wish I could find more books that were this colorful and easy to read. I would highly recommned this book to anyone interested in art and / or teaching.

I am a homeschooling mom, sadly lacking in the creativity department. I love this book and have found it to be a wonderful resource for art class. It's easy to use and dd loves the activities. This is the one subject I was really concerned about being able to adequately teach, but this book has made it so simple. In addition to just offering a creative outlet, it gives instruction in actual technique.

This book was helpful in teaching my almost two year old what the potty was for. She loved the book.

I grew up on this book now I get to share it with my daughters and its just like I remember.

we couldn't be happier with "once upon a potty" .. we received it, along with cotton trainers, when our girl was 22 months old ... she had already been exhibiting all the classic ready-for-pottying cues, with regular morning & after nap pee-pee-ing, so the addition of prudence's story was the icing on the cake that gave her the confidence to really go full-time for the potty.

it's a confidence booster, and we adore it ( though we did change the potty language to suit our family : no biggie! ) and it will be a treasured selection in her library forever.

alona, thank you for writing a smart book for smart kids.

I thought the book would be a bit long for my daughter's attention span but she actually loves it. It has great step by step explanations, its simply & the illustrations are colorful enough to keep her engaged. The picture of the little girl is anatomically correct (in a benign sense of course) & the time it takes to read the book fills the time she needs to sit long enough to be successful.
My daughter loves the book & so do I!

The pictures are cute but what is the point if the potty doesnt look anything like one, it is a pot with a handle! I have been reading it to my 21 month old daughter and I skip a lot of the pages. Might be ok for older kids but I am not very impressed with this book.

Solid construction, cute illustrations, fun textures for little ones to feel. My only complaint is that one of the puppy's shaggy ears get kind of poofy so the book won't close completely. Other than that though, great book.

This book is cute. It has a different texture on each page. I would recommend using it for read-alouds for awhile. Young children may eat or tear off the "feely" parts.

This is another winner in this board book series, written by the "touchy-feely" team of Watt, Fiona, and Usborne. It's essentially a monologue by an unseen narrator (perhaps a young toddler like the book's audience),who notes why various breeds of dogs are NOT his or her own.

The illustarions are bright primary colors, against similar but contrasting backgrounds. Embedded within the triple-thick board book pages is some texture-rich material described in the book. These attributes enable the narrator to label and categorize the various dogs, and to deduce that the pictured dog is NOT "my puppy."

Ultimately, after you and your young charge touch the materials, enjoy the bright volotd and varying breeds, and delight in the repetitive; "that's not my puppy," refrain, the tenacious reader/listener will celebrate the ultimate discovery of the beloved dog. A nice little vocabulary buikder and an all-around suinpke but fun boatd book that imaginative adults can enahnce with a nicely dramatic reading.

This is great as far as touchy feely books go. There are a variety of textures for baby to explore. But it is very short with a total of five page of text. And the text itself is fine but not very rich.

That's Not My Puppy: Its Coat Is Too Hairy is short and sweet on length, but wonderfully entertaining with textures. This is a great, sturdy board book that very little readers will enjoy multiple times.

And, when you've explored all you want about the dogs, you can always discuss that cute little mouse who seems to appear on every single page!

Cute, educational, and very, very entertaining. This is a must for your toddler's library.

This hardboard book has large, full page black and white drawings. Each page features a different animal-bunny, cat, etc. This is a great infant and toddler book to practice naming and labeling animals.

Bought a few black and white books and have been showing them periodically since our baby has been only a few days old. He will stare at the book and study things. I've only gotten through the cover and one page but I can see the images really capture the babies attention. Will be using it for months to come. Very nice illustrations. Highly recommended.

My mother-in-law will make up stories for my 4 month old daughter while she smiles at the pictures. Even without the stories, she'll still smile at the pictures.

My 7 month old daughter loves books -- loves to eat them, that is. Knowing that this is common in infants, I don't stress over that though.) However, there are a couple of her books that she actually likes to "read." Baby Animals: Black and White is one of them. She just stares at the pictures and doesn't seem to tire of it easily. She is so into this book that it is the first one she learned to turn the pages of herself. Babies love black and white images, and these are bold enough to really capture their attention. Highly recommended.

I ordered this book after reading that newborns are most stimulated by black and white images. I was amazed when I held the book up for my 3-week old to look and he actually looked at it and focused on each of the pages, scanning back and forth. It was really neat to see him paying such close attention to something at such an early age.