One of my knitbloging pals, Lolly, asked on her blog what kinds of things people collect. While her collection of pomegranates is far more interesting, I thought I would share something I’ve been collecting recently, since I began working as a Children’s librarian.

In the few months I’ve worked at SPL I’ve discovered some children’s picture books that I am in love with. I decided to start adding the interesting ones to my personal collection, so that I would have a nice, fresh, clean copy for storytimes. And I thought I would share some of my recent aquisitions with you!

Bark George! I discovered this one while observing my collegue’s storytime. She read this to her group of kids and it was a big hit, so I decided to try it out at my first storytime. The more I read it, the more I loved it! George is a dog that, instead of barking, makes the noises of different animals: a cat, a duck, a pig, and a cow. His mother becomes worried about him and takes him to the vet, who, one by one, pulls out a cat, a duck, a pig, and a cow (!) from the inside of George! This cures him and his mother is very happy. But the story doesn’t end there. There is a little twist at the end ;). This book is written and illustrated by Jules Feiffer who has won a pulizer prize for some of his editorial cartoons.

Chewy Louie. This is a book about a puppy that chews on everything ( sound familiar?). The extent of his chewing is over the top and it’s very funny. The story is basically about how Chewy Louie chews up everything in the house and the dad becomes so fed up with it that he considers giving Chewy Louie away. However, this plan is averted when one day they wake up and Louie doesn’t chew anymore because he is growing up. The illustrations are what make this story so awesome, although the writing is very good, and very funny. It is written and illustrated by Howie Scheider, the creator of the cartoon Eek and Meek.

Farmer Brown Shears His Sheep: a yarn about wool. Being a knitter, this book kind of jumped off the shelves at me and I’ve had it in my clutches ever since. This is one of a series of Farmer Brown stories by Teri Sloat, and they are all really cute and popular with the kids. This particular one takes the reader through the process of how wool is made. Throughout the process the poor sheep who get sheared become cold, so farmer brown knits sweaters for them with the wool that is made from thier fuzz. I love this story because it teaches kids how thier wool sweaters came to be, while telling a fun story. And it rhymes. what more could you ask for?

We were tired of living in a house. This was my FAVORITE book when I was a kid. I have fond memories of my older brother and sister reading this to me. I think they even made thier own little “book on tape” of this, where they recorded thier voice reading the book so my little brother and I could listen and follow along. We have the newer, 1999 edition in the library, and i read it in a storytime a couple of weeks ago. The story itself is really cute, but I love, love love the older, 1969 edition way better. I love it so much that I ordered it from a used book seller via Amazon. I just got it in the mail this past week and I am so stoked. The illustrations in the older version are waaay better than the newer version. They are in pen and ink, but they add so much to the storytelling. The story is about four kids who decide that they were tired of living in a house so go live in other places, a cave, a beach, a tree, etc. They leave each place because of calamities related to that place, for example, they leave the beach because the tide comes in and washes the sandcastle that they built away. After all of this they decide that to go back to living in a house.

I ordered a few more books from Amazon that haven’t come yet, but I will post them when I get them. I can’t remember what they are right now 🙂