When people think of fantasy books for children, they often think of books such as Harry Potter, The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan. These classics are all wonderful books, but I believe that there are other fantasy books that we can start sharing with children at a younger age. Picturebooks have started to offer some incredible pieces of fantasy recently. Why should you read fantasy to children? What can they possibly be learning? Fantasy often works as a metaphor for bigger situations and ideas that a child might be struggling with. It also helps to develop healthy coping skills […]
Do I Need to Buy Different Books for Boys and Girls?
As a soon to be mama of a little boy myself, this is a subject that I keep coming back to. The same way toys are marketed separately to boys and girls, there are some books that are specifically marketed to boys and others to girls. As the person that purchases books for our school library, I am used to carefully monitoring the choice of books we are purchasing to make sure we are not spreading negative gender stereotypes even at this young age. I remember reading the book Wringer by Jerry Spinelli and realizing that often the books we […]
How Do I Support Early Literacy in My Young Child?
I was recently having a conversation with a parent about how they wanted their child to believe that they can accomplish things. Not that it would come easily to them, but simply that they would view themselves as capable. It was a lovely moment because one of my specific goals as a teacher is that the children in my care have high self-efficacy. The level of self-efficacy is the belief that one is capable of producing a desired or intended result. So, someone with low self-efficacy believes that things just happen to them and they have no control over it, […]
How Do I Include Diversity In The Literature My Child Is Exposed To?
It’s tough out there in picturebook world to not notice that a lot of the popular characters are white. You’ve got Madeline, Eloise, Iggy Peck, and Harold. The other difficult piece is that the books that have multi-racial protagonists often have Caucasian authors. Take authors like Rachel Isadora and Ezra Jack Keats who produced picture books that included levels of diversity in their stories that until then had never been seen before. What does a parent give priority to? My suggestion is that it is a bit of a compromise. Here are some of my tips for choosing picture books that […]
Are Fairy Tales Still Appropriate for Young Children?
I’m going to start by referencing my most important rule for sharing a book with your child: make sure you have read it yourself first. Fairy tales, in particular, are the kinds of stories that are going to lead to more questions. Be prepared to have a discussion with your child about what you read and be prepared for your child to want to process some of the things that they just heard. I actually start the discussion about fiction and nonfiction pretty early with the children in my care. When I tell them this book is fiction, they will […]
How Do I Choose Quality Picturebooks?
Picturebooks are currently experiencing somewhat of a renaissance. There are many talented writers and artists that have chosen to focus on this format and as a result, we have incredible writing and illustrations in many different forms and styles . There are illustrators like Oliver Jeffers, Christian Robinson and Suzy Lee that have distinct artistic voices that make beautiful books. There are also talented authors like board book author Belle Yang and the award-winning Sherman Alexie who just put out his first picture book. The choices for what to read with our children are large and the task of choosing what […]
Welcome and Introduction
Welcome to Bookish Baby! My name is Tanya and I have been working in early education for over a decade. One of my favorite parts of teaching is seeing children ages 0-5 learn to love stories. As an early educator, I have become passionate about providing high quality, respectful books for the children in my care to explore. I created this website as I completed my Masters in Education from Penn State with a focus on children’s literature because having been exposed to so many different ideas about the importance of quality children’s literature throughout my program, I decided to […]