Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, pictures by Clement Hurd, 1947.
This is a classic children’s bedtime book and has been for generations!
It all starts with a green room that has a red balloon. The book describes everything in the room in rhyme. There are kittens and mittens and a picture of bears in chairs. It’s a cozy, peaceful room.
Then, the book says “goodnight” to everything in the room (and some things outside, like the moon), one thing at a time.
It’s just a cute, gentle book that is perfect to read to children who are going to bed. Reading it slowly can be very soothing. The book never says it, but the “people” in the story are rabbits.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, 1930.
A little train is pulling a load of things for children over a mountain. The train is carrying toys of all kinds and also good, healthy food for the children.
Unfortunately, something goes wrong, and the engine pulling the train breaks down. The toys aboard the train know that the children over the mountain are waiting for them and that they will need the food on the train, too. Other train engines pass by, and the toys try to get them to help pull the train.
However, even though these other train engines are not currently pulling loads of their own, each of them has a reason why they cannot help to pull the train with toys and food for children. One engine is old and doesn’t think that he’s strong enough to pull even this small train. The bigger, stronger engines think of themselves as being too important to pull this small train because they handle more important things, like passenger cars or freight for adults, not children.
The toys are despairing, but then, a small blue engine comes along, and they ask her if she can help them. At first, the little engine isn’t sure that she can help because she is only a small engine and has never been over the mountain before, but the toys explain how important it is to get the toys and food to the children, so the Little Engine agrees to try.
As the Little Blue Engine pulls the toy train over the mountain, she gives herself positive self-talk, telling herself “I think I can-I think I can.” When she succeeds in her mission, everyone is happy, and she says, “I thought I could!”
This classic picture book is often used to show children the benefits of positive thinking and being willing to try. Instead of focusing on doubts about herself or reasons not to try, the Little Blue Engine makes the decision to try and tells herself that it’s possible for her to succeed. The Little Blue Engine doesn’t know if she can accomplish the mission (she “thinks” she can, although she doesn’t “know” if she can), but when she is willing to try, she discovers that she actually can. Even though she is small and seems less important than the bigger trains, she accomplishes more because she is willing to do what the bigger trains will not, taking part in something that is outside of her basic, required job. I also like how the book shows that it is sometimes the small, less prestigious tasks that make the biggest difference. Taking food and toys to children doesn’t seem important to the big trains, but it matters to the children and their families over the mountain.
However, this is not the first form of this story. The story of the little train engine that is able to go over the mountain because it thinks it can is actually based on an earlier form of the story that was originally part of a sermon from the early 1900s.
The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). There are also different cartoon versions of the story.
Grace loves stories, both hearing them and acting them out. She is imaginative, and likes playing games of pretend and acting out adventures.
When Grace’s teacher tells the class that they are going to perform the play Peter Pan and will be holding auditions for parts in the play, Grace wants the title role of Peter Pan. A couple of the other kids think that it’s odd for her to want to be Peter Pan because she is both a girl and black, which is exactly the opposite of how they usually see the character.
However, Grace still wants to play Peter Pan. When she tells her mother and grandmother what the other kids said, they reassure her that she can get the part if she really wants it and puts her mind to it.
To prove to Grace that a young black girl can get starring roles, her grandmother takes her to see a ballet where the granddaughter of a friend of hers from Trinidad is playing the role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet.
Seeing the performance cheers Grace up and gives her the confidence to audition for the part of Peter Pan. When her classmates see how good she is when she performs, they all agree that Grace should have the role of Peter Pan.
The message that young girls like Grace can do what they set their minds to, even if the roles they want in life aren’t quite traditional, is a good one. As I read the story, I was also thinking that the objection that Grace can’t be Peter Pan actually doesn’t make much sense if you know that Peter Pan, of all roles in plays, is one that is often played by a female. I remember that when I was a kid in elementary school, there was a girl who played the part of Peter Pan, and one of the teachers explained that women sometimes play Peter Pan, especially when the actors are all adults, because women have the higher-pitched voices that the part really needs. I would liked it if the teacher in the story also mentioned that. Also, acting is about capturing the spirit of the character in the story, thinking and feeling like they would think and feel and acting the way they would act. I would have liked it if they had mentioned that. Grace may not look quite the way people might picture Peter Pan, but if she can capture the character in her performance, she’s a good actor.
I liked the pictures in the book for their realism. In a couple of the pictures which show how Grace like to act out fantasies, she is shirtless, but she is very young and it isn’t possible to really see anything, so I don’t consider it inappropriate, but I thought that I would mention it.
The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis, 1975.
Michael’s great-great-aunt, Aunt Dew (short for Dewbet), has moved in with him and his parents because she is one hundred years old and no longer able to live on her own. It has been a big adjustment for the entire family, but even though Michael has had to give up space in his room for her, he is glad that she has come to live with them because the old woman fascinates him. She is (apparently) extremely absent-minded, often calling Michael by his father’s name, John, although some of that seems to be deliberate because she wishes that Michael’s parents had named him after his father. Other times, she seems to forget that she’s no longer living in her old house or just starts singing an old spiritual song, forgetting what she was talking about before.
John is extremely fond of his elderly aunt because she raised him after his parents died in a boating accident, and she loves him like a son. Aunt Dew’s own sons are long grown and gone. However, Michael’s mother, Ruth, finds Aunt Dew’s presence in the house difficult. Ruth thinks that Aunt Dew doesn’t appreciate some of the nice things that she does for her, and she thinks that Aunt Dew doesn’t like her. It’s not completely true, but Aunt Dew does seem more comfortable around Michael after spending many years of her life raising boys, and Aunt Dew admits to Michael that she finds it difficult to talk to Ruth because they don’t know each other like she and John do. Aunt Dew and Ruth also have a conflict over some of Aunt Dew’s old possessions.
Aunt Dew is upset that Ruth got rid of some of her old things after she moved in with them. Michael thought it was a mean thing to do, and Aunt Dew misses these objects. When Michael argues with his mother about these objects, Ruth explains to him that she’s not trying to be mean. Ruth compares Aunt Dew to a child, like Michael, saying that she “Thinks she needs a whole lot of stuff she really doesn’t.” Ruth sees it as just clearing out things that are old and worn out and no good in order to make room for newer, nicer things, comparing it to when Michael got old enough to realize that he didn’t need his old teddy bear that was falling apart and was willing to get rid of it along with some other things in order to make room for Aunt Dew to move in. Ruth sees clearing out old things as a way to move forward in life and thinks that it’s important to help Aunt Dew adjust to her new life with the family. However, a lot of Aunt Dew’s long life and past are tied in with some of these objects, and as a one-hundred-year-old woman, Aunt Dew has more past behind her than future life to make room for. Michael helps her to hide some of them in her closet to keep them from being thrown out, but he’s particularly concerned about her hundred penny box.
When Aunt Dew’s husband was alive, he started a penny collection for her with one penny to represent every year that Aunt Dew has been alive. After his death, Aunt Dew continued to collect pennies, putting another penny into the box every year to represent her age. Michael loves the pennies in the box because, when he counts them with Aunt Dew, she will stop him at certain years and tell him stories about things that happened during those years, telling him a lot of family stories. Michael’s mother isn’t interested in taking the pennies, but she thinks that the old box they’re in is too worn out and should be replaced with something else. However, Aunt Dew sees that box as being like herself: old and worn and holding all of the years of her life. To throw it out would be almost like throwing out Aunt Dew herself. Michael’s mother doesn’t see it that way, but Michael sees the connection. To try to save the box, Michael hides it from his mother.
The conflict about Aunt Dew’s things isn’t really resolved by the end of the story because Michael’s mother still doesn’t understand how Aunt Dew feels, and we don’t know if she will come to understand or if the box will remain hidden or not. I found parts of the story frustrating because Ruth doesn’t seem to want to listen to either Aunt Dew or Michael, discounting them as the kid and the old lady. Even though Ruth is frustrated with Aunt Dew, I think that part of it is her fault for not really listening or trying to understand how she feels. This may be part of the reason why Aunt Dew feels like she can’t really talk to Ruth. To be fair, Ruth doesn’t mean to be mean, but at the same time, she kind of is because she’s too stuck on what she thinks is best and that idea that she knows better than a young boy and an old woman to consider that her ideas might not be what’s best for her family and family relationships and that she needs to give a little. My guess is that she’ll understand how Aunt Dew feels when she’s also an old woman, with more past than future ahead, but with a little imagination and empathy, I think she could see that decades sooner. I remember reading this book when I was a kid and liking it for the concept of the hundred penny box and the old woman’s stories, but I find the lack of resolution a little frustrating now. It’s one of those books that makes me want to sit the characters down and explain a few things to them, but I can’t.
Besides
the concept of the penny box, I’m also fascinated by the name Dewbet, which I’ve
never heard anywhere else besides this story.
The pictures in the book are also unusual, and there’s a note in the
back of the book that explains a little about the art style. The pictures, which are in sepia tones, are
painted with water colors, and the light areas were made with water and bleach.
This is a Newbery Honor Book, and it is currently available online through Internet Archive.
There is also a short film version that is available to buy or rent from Vimeo. Teachers Pay Teachers has lesson plans for this book. If you would like to see a reading and discussion with the author of the book, there is a copy on YouTube.
Corduroy is a small teddy bear who lives in a department store, waiting for someone to buy him and take him home. However, he is missing one of the buttons on his overalls, and it makes people reluctant to buy him.
One night, after the store is closed, Corduroy sneaks out of the toy department to go looking for his lost button. After a trip up the escalator, he finds himself in the furniture department. To Corduroy, it’s like climbing a mountain and finding himself in a palace.
When he spots a button on a mattress, he thinks it might be his and pulls it off. By accident, he knocks over a lamp, which attracts the attention of a night watchman, who spots him and returns him to the toy department.
The little girl who wanted Corduroy before, Lisa, returns to the store and buys him. Lisa takes Corduroy home and sews a new button on Corduroy’s overalls. Corduroy is happy because he’s always wanted a home and a friend, and now he has both.
At first, this book was a stand-alone story, but later, the author wrote a sequel called A Pocket for Corduroy. Later, other authors continued the series.
The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert, 1989.
This is an alphabet book for young children, but it’s not like most alphabet books. Most alphabet books try to tie letters of the alphabet to words that young children know, to emphasize the sounds that the letters make, like in A, My Name is Alice or the letter-themed tongue twisters in Animalia.
In Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, the letters of the alphabet decide to climb to the top of a coconut tree. (Why not?) They go up the tree in alphabetical order.
But, by the time they reach the end of the alphabet, there are too many letters in the tree, and they all fall out.
The uppercase versions of the letters are the adults of the story, like parents and aunts and uncles, and they comfort the lowercase letters who fell out of the tree.
At the end of the book, the letter ‘a’ tries to convince the others to climb the tree again.
As I said, this book struck me as unusual for an alphabet book because it doesn’t try to tie any of the letters to associated words. Mostly, it just emphasizes the order of the letters, first in the order that they go up the tree, and then in the order that they recover from falling out.
The story is told in rhyme, and the “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” part is just sounds that fill out the story/rhyme, like it’s part of a song. At the end of the book, there’s a page with all of the letters of the alphabet, both upper and lowercase.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
This retelling of the classic fairy tale is a Caldecott Medal winner. The illustrations are beautiful! A note in the beginning of the book explains a little more about the author’s sources for the story as well as his view about it. Instead of focusing on an evil witch who holds a young girl captive, he presents “a mother figure who powerfully resists her child’s inevitable growth.”
A
couple who have wished for children for a long time are excited to realize that
they are finally going to have one!
However, the wife finds herself with an irresistible craving for the
Rapunzel (an herb) that grows in the nearby garden of a sorceress. She is so desperate to have some that she is
able to persuade her husband to steal some for her. But, even having some causes her craving to
grow.
When the husband returns to the garden to get more Rapunzel, the sorceress catches him. He explains the situation, saying that his wife’s craving is so intense that he fears she will die if she doesn’t get some Rapunzel. The sorceress agrees that the wife can have the Rapunzel she needs, but in exchange, she demands the child when it is born. Not knowing what else to do, the husband reluctantly agrees. When the wife gives birth to a baby girl, the sorceress comes, names the baby “Rapunzel”, and takes her away from her parents.
The sorceress cares for the girl and raises her. When the beautiful young girl turns twelve, the sorceress takes her to live in a tower in the forest. The tower is magical, looking narrow on the outside, but containing many beautiful and comfortable rooms. The only way in or out is through the window at the very top. The witch has Rapunzel let down her extremely long, beautiful hair so that she can climb up.
Rapunzel lives alone in the tower for years, until a prince happens to ride by and hears her singing. The prince is enchanted by the singing and asks questions about the tower at the nearest houses, learning about the sorceress and the young woman in the tower.
One
day, he sees the sorceress visiting Rapunzel and sees how she gets into the
tower. So, later, he calls to Rapunzel
himself, asking her to let down her hair.
Rapunzel is surprised and frightened at first, when she sees that her
new visitor isn’t the sorceress, but he speaks nicely to her, and they become
friendly. The prince proposes marriage,
and Rapunzel accepts. After that, he
visits her every night, without the sorceress’s knowledge.
However,
Rapunzel eventually gets pregnant, and when her clothes no longer fit her, the
sorceress realizes it. She calls
Rapunzel a “wicked child” and says that she has betrayed her. She cuts off Rapunzel’s long hair and exiles
her into the wilderness, alone.
The sorceress uses Rapunzel’s long hair to trick the prince into climbing into the tower. When he comes, she tells him that Rapunzel is gone, and he will never see her again. The prince falls from the tower, injuring his eyes. Blinded, the prince wanders alone for a year, lamenting for his lost wife.
Eventually, he finds Rapunzel in the wilderness, recognizing her singing. She has given birth to twins. Rapunzel’s tears heal the prince’s eyes, and he is able to see again. Realizing that they are near to his kingdom, he takes Rapunzel and the twins home.
The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
The Nutcracker by E.T.A. Hoffmann, retold by Anthea Bell, 1816, 1987.
The reason for the two dates of this book is that the original Nutcracker story was written by a German writer, E.T.A. Hoffmann, in 1816, as the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Some places, including the back of this book note different publishing dates for the original story because it was published more than once during the 1810s, as part of different story collections. This article gives more details about the original version of the story and different publications. Since then, it has been retold many times and in many different forms, including the famous ballet based on the story. In ballets and plays, the name of the heroine is often Clara, but in this picture book, as in the original story, the heroine’s name is Marie.
In the beginning of the book, which is set in the 19th century, Marie and her brother Fritz, are opening their Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. (The book explains that opening presents on Christmas Eve is a German tradition. A friend in Germany also explained that to me once because, in Germany, presents are supposedly brought by the Christ Child, not by Santa Claus. Since then, I’ve read that explanation may vary, depending on whether the household is Catholic or Protestant.) The children receive many wonderful presents, including a toy castle from their godfather, Mr. Drosselmeier. Marie’s favorite present is a nutcracker that looks like an odd little man. When Fritz is too rough with the nutcracker and breaks it, Marie takes care of it.
Marie stays up late, and when she finally puts the nutcracker away at midnight, she is astonished to see an army of mice coming out of the floorboards. The leader of the mouse army is the Mouse King, who has seven heads. The Nutcracker leads an army of toys against the mouse army. The mouse army appears to be winning, so, to save the Nutcracker, Marie takes off her shoe and throws it at the mice. Then, her arm hurts, and she apparently faints.
When Marie wakes up, she is in her own bed, and her mother tells her that she apparently put her arm through the glass door of the toy cabinet, cutting herself badly. When Marie tries to tell her mother about the battle between the toys and the mice, her mother and the doctor think that she’s ill and confine her to her bed for a few days. Mr. Drosselmeier repairs the Nutcracker and returns it to Marie, telling her the reason why nutcrackers look so strange and ugly, calling it The Tale of the Hard Nut.
Year ago, there was a royal banquet given by the King and Queen who were the parents of Princess Pirlipat. A mouse who claimed to be the queen of Mousolia demanded some food from the banquet as the Queen was preparing it. The King was angry that the mouse took some of the food and wanted revenge. The King asked his Court Watchmaker, who was also named Drosselmeier, to build some mousetraps to catch the mouse queen’s seven sons. When the sons were caught, the mouse queen vowed that she’d take her revenge on Princess Pirlipat. Princess Pirlipat was a pretty baby, but the mouse queen turned her ugly. The King took out his anger on the Court Watchmaker, ordering him to find a way to change Princess Pirlipat back to normal and threatening to behead him if he failed. After consulting the Court Astronomer, the Court Watchmaker learned that the key to breaking the spell on the princess was a special nut, which had to be cracked by being bitten by a man who filled certain special requirements, which all happened to be met by the son of the Watchmaker’s dollmaker cousin. The King had promised that the person who could break the spell could marry his daughter, but the mouse queen interrupted the last part of the ritual, causing the young cousin to turn ugly himself. When pretty Princess Pirlipat saw her rescuer turn ugly, she didn’t want to marry him anymore. The Court Astronomer said that the only way to break the spell on the young man was for him to defeat the new Mouse King – the mouse queen’s youngest son – and for him to find a woman who would love him regardless of his appearance.
Marie knows that the story is true because she has seen the Mouse King herself. She loves the Nutcracker and wants to help him. The Nutcracker returns to visit Marie during the night and makes repeated demands of her for her candy and toys. Marie knows that, no matter what she gives him, the Mouse King will keep returning to demand something else. The Nutcracker tells her that he needs a sword to fight the Mouse King. They borrow one from a toy soldier, and the Nutcracker successfully defeats the Mouse King, giving Marie his seven golden crowns.
As a reward for helping him, the Nutcracker takes Marie to the land where he is from, leading her there through a magic staircase in an old wardrobe. The Nutcracker’s land is beautiful, filled with candy and sweets and gold and silver fruit. (The Christmas Wood that they pass through reminds me of the woods in the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.) The Prince Nutcracker’s home is Marzipan Castle in Candy City, where his beautiful princess sisters live. They welcome Marie and the Nutcracker home.
Then, suddenly, Marie wakes up, as if it were all a dream. However, Marie knows that it wasn’t a dream because she still has the Mouse King’s crowns. Marie tells the Nutcracker that she loves him. There is a sudden bang, and Marie faints. When she wakes up, she is told that Mr. Drosselmeier’s nephew has come to visit them. The nephew is the Nutcracker, restored to human form and now a handsome young man, thanks to Marie’s love. Marie later marries the nephew, and the two of them rule magical Kingdom of Sweets.
There is a section in the back of the book that explains a little more about E.T.A. Hoffmann and the original version of the Nutcracker story.
This book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
This book is part of a series by same author about children growing up in Colonial America. Each of the books is the series has photographs of historical reenactors portraying real people from Colonial history. This book focuses on two children who are traveling on the Mayflower in 1620, heading to what would become the Plymouth colony. One of the children is a girl who is a passenger on the ship, and the other is a boy who is part of the crew, a ship’s apprentice. In the section of historical information in the back of the book, the author explains that the girl was based on a real girl who was a passenger on the Mayflower, although the boy was not based on a specific apprentice; he is just meant to show what a ship’s apprentice would have been like at that time and to help explain the duties of the various crew members as he assists them.
The ship’s apprentice is called William Small. He is specifically apprenticed to the ship’s master, Christopher Jones (historical character). As an apprentice, he is learning basic navigation skills and assists the regular crew members with various tasks, including serving food.
The girl is named Ellen Moore. She and the other passengers are traveling in cramped quarters, and people are often seasick or trying to find ways to keep themselves occupied during the long journey. Ellen is traveling with younger siblings, and she plays with them in between performing routine chores, like sewing and preparing food.
During the voyage, there is a terrible storm, and the passengers are all confined below deck without light because lanterns and candles would pose too much risk of fire while the ship is rocked during the storm. William has to help the ship’s carpenter to repair leaks. Before the storm is fully over, Mrs. Hopkins, one of the passengers, gives birth to a baby she names Oceanus (historical person, the real Oceanus made it through the voyage although he sadly died young, possibly about age six, but the date of his death is uncertain).
The book ends with their arrival in the Americas. Because the storm blew them off course, the Mayflower did not arrive at its intended destination in Virginia but further north at Cape Cod in what is now Massachusetts. Because winter was setting in, the passengers decided not to risk further travel and established their colony there, 65 days after their ship first left England.
In the back of the book, the section with historical information explains more about both the characters in the story and the reenactors. The historical Ellen Moore and her siblings were traveling to the colony without their parents, under the guardianship of the other families, acting as young servants in their employment. The book mentions that the Moore children were without their parents because of a family tragedy but is not specific about what it was. I looked it up, and the story is both sad and bizarre. I can see why the author didn’t want to explain it in a children’s book. Apparently, the children’s parents had an arranged marriage and were not happy being married to each other. The children’s mother had a long love affair with another man, and also apparently, all of the children were the biological children of her lover. The mother’s husband began to notice that the children physically resembled his wife’s lover. The couple bitterly divorced, and after the husband was granted custody of the children (which, apparently, weren’t his anyway), he decided to send them away to the Americas with the departing pilgrims, paying for them to be taken on the voyage, never seeing them again. Sadly, Ellen probably did not survive the first winter at the Plymouth colony because she disappears from the historical record during that time. Out of the four Moore children traveling on the Mayflower, only one survived to adulthood, Ellen’s young brother Richard. Richard married twice in his life and had seven children of his own. He became a sailor and ship’s captain and eventually died an elderly man in Salem, Massachusetts, during the 1690s, not long after the Salem witch trials. None of this information about Richard is mentioned in the book, but I thought it was interesting background information. In the book, there is also additional information about the ship, The Mayflower, and the reproduction ship used in the pictures, The Mayflower II.
The book is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.
Ten Little Rabbits by Virginia Grossman and Sylvia Long, 1991.
This picture book is loosely based on the Ten Little Indians counting rhyme, but with a twist. Instead of “Ten Little Indians,” it’s ten little rabbits. The rabbits in the pictures are dressed in traditional costumes from different Native American tribes. Also, unlike in some versions of the Ten Little Indians rhyme, none of the characters are eliminated during the course of the rhyme. The rhyme simply counts upward from one to ten.
The pictures are beautiful and detailed, and they do a good job of showing the rabbits in the poses of humans.
The book intentionally shows the rabbits acting out aspects of traditional Native American culture. Very young children might not fully appreciate what the book is trying to depict, but there is a special section in the back that explains which tribes the rabbits are supposed to belong to and what they are doing in the pictures.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 