Finding good books is so important for our children. Reading to our children from birth is the single most important support to early literacy and helps develop a life long love of reading. Our youngest children need books based in reality, stories featuring children are fantastic or stories that our children would experience in their lives. This is important because young children take EVERYTHING IN as if it is reality - so if there are monsters in a book to them monsters are real. We want to provide a strong foundation in real life so that when our children are older and capable of imagining they can understand reality from fiction, and this foundation starts from birth.
Finding good books is hard. There are so many books for children out there and so many of them underestimate our children’s need for reality by either having talking animals, featuring magical creatures like superheroes, fairies, etc., or using branded figures for promotion - books on Paw Patrol or Dora the Explorer. This does a disservices to our children and their needs and so we have to become really good book critics and buy with authority.
In effort to help with book purchases - because it is easy to get overwhelmed with options - here are a few links.
How we Montessori: http://www.howwemontessori.com/how-we-montessori/books/
The Montessori Notebook has compiled a list of 100 books that are all good (although some are in dutch) and also gives the following clear and helpful guidelines for book buying:
1 based in reality
2 make sure it is beautiful
3 number of words per page to be age appropriate
4 right type of book for their age
5 look for rich language
6 includes interesting details
http://www.themontessorinotebook.com/books-for-montessori-children/
The secret society of books has a fantastic instagram account (secretsocietyofbooks) and I use it often to help my book purchases. They also have a website. http://www.secretsocietyofbooks.com
Think about what books you would like to have around for a long time and what books you won't mind reading and re-reading with your children. Beautiful books, with children in the centre of the storyline are going to be more interesting and have more longevity than any books that follow a brand or that have talking animals.
Happy book hunting.