Literary likes ... and dislikes

Elle has quite a library for a one year old. I love that she likes books - I've always been quite the reader, and it brings me immense pleasure to watch her absorb the books, to hear her "read" them herself. I love to read to her, and I even appreciate the clutter of books strewn across the nursery floor as Hurricane Elle comes tearing through.


But we've reached a stage where Elle wants to have the same book(s) read over. And over. And over. And over. The current culprits are two board books I got from the library - Hello, Bugs and I like toys. I read one, shut it, put it on the floor/table/chair. Elle picks it up, hands it back to me and settles back in my lap. Rinse and repeat until I can snag a different book (I'm digging Snack Time for Cow - another library pick - right now.) It might be slightly less annoying if these two books had more substance - more of a plot, a little bit of character development, some sort of dénouement - but they don't. So repeating "Rectangle" and "Hello, beetle" 25 times a day gets a little mind-numbing.

It got me thinking, though - there are definitely children's book that I steer Elle toward to because *I'm* in the mood to read them. And there are definitely others that I will put on the top shelves of her bookshelf (where she can't reach yet) so I don't have to read it right then. 

Right now, I'm a big fan of Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? and the Llama llama books. (Seriously, if you can walk around without absentmindedly saying "Llama llama red pajama" or "Llama llama misses Mama," a gold star to you.) I went through a The Snowy Day phase during the "winter." My go-to travel book is Goodnight Moon. This is partly because I like to think the familiar rhythm of the book is comforting to Elle when we're not at home, and also because I have a paperback copy that works well in my constant fight to stay under the 50-pound limit on my checked luggage. I am tricky like that. I also adore Love You Forever, but I don't read it too often because it makes me cry 99.9% of the time. When I was growing up, I was obsessed with the Angelina Ballerina series. Elle has a few of the books in her collection, but so far, she had no interest in them, and they *are* longer and less colorful than the majority of the kids books in her collection.

One of the best ways to distract Elle during a diaper change
is to hand her a book - I just can't give her A Tale of Two Cities
or she'll drop it on her head and tears will (justifiably) ensue.

Tim, on the other hand, is not a fan of Goodnight Moon. He's a big If you give a pig a pancake kind of guy. He also loves the Ladybug Girl books, but they're a bit lengthy, and right now, short is best with Elle's attention span.

Is your kid a bookworm? What are their favorite books? Do you have any favorites/least favorites?