Library Trip Book Haul and Some Words of Wisdom

Library Trip!

This past Saturday I went to the library for the first time since the pandemic started. My library has just started allowing people to browse inside for a short time instead of using remote curbside pickup. Ava came too, and Steve and the baby. The atmosphere was quiet and peaceful, and even though the LEGO box and train set had been removed, we still had a great time. We even picked up some free masks for library patrons at checkout and found a movie we’ve been trying to watch for ages! It was a great Saturday morning trip.

I must admit though, I felt a little out of my element. I wanted to find a handful of good quality books that I could read to Ava and review for the blog, but I wasn’t sure where to start. It’s easy to research books online and easily find favorites from your favorite author, or look up the top greatest books about potty-training or whatever, but when faced with rows and rows of books with tiny spines that are impossible to read I felt overwhelmed. Here I have a children’s book blog and couldn’t even choose a children’s book! And this wasn’t even the main library, it was the small branch library so the selection wasn’t even that big!

mo willems don't let the pigeon drive the bus children's book

I made my way to the W’s because you can’t go wrong with Mo Willems and picked out a Pigeon book. We have the classic Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! book and this one was about Pigeon wanting a puppy. Yay! One book down. Now what? I didn’t want to stick with just well-known authors, I know there are some hidden gems of books out there just waiting to be read. But how was I going to find a good book from these mountains of books?

All the while Ava kept running up to me excited with new books she found. After about the fourth book was when I realized the obvious: that I didn’t need to pick out books, Ava could! Why I didn’t realize sooner that a 3-year-old kid is perfectly capable of picking out her own books I don’t know. I think I was stressing about finding the perfectly curated selection of books to showcase. I was afraid we wouldn’t come again for a while and I didn’t want to miss out on any amazing books. And she picked out some gems! We got the Mo Willems book and a Little Blue Truck book. We got the full-sized version of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (it’s different from the board book version at home!) And Ava chose the rest.

Words of Wisdom

So my words of wisdom for today are, trust your child to choose what they want to read. I love a good bestsellers list or top ten best list, but your child is the best judge of what he or she will like! Trust them! There will be hits and misses, but you will find some of the most wonderful books that you otherwise might never have tried. Just because you’re not reading a Caldecott award-winning book every time doesn’t mean that what they are reading is not amazing. All books are good for reading and all books will help them learn and grow.

So here’s what we ended up getting.