After reading everyone’s literary narratives from a while ago, I started thinking a lot about children’s books. These books are arguably the most important books of them all because they are the first to teach children not only how to sound words out and put them together, but also how to think and how to imagine. So today, I wanted to explore what I think makes a children’s book good and list two of my favorite children’s books. Note that by children’s books, I mean books for preschoolers or kindergarteners, not for older elementary schoolers.

From my observations remembering my favorite children’s books, I think that there are four main qualities that make a kids’ book good.

• A complete yet interesting plot: By complete, I mean that the story has a beginning and an end. Speaking from experience, no kid wants to see a cliffhanger or would understand the significance of one; furthermore, it is hard to put an easy-to-understand message in the story if there is no resolution. 
• A good lesson/moral: Little kids are learning new things every day, and they are learning how to act. That’s where a good moral which teaches children to be nice, kind, resilient, or any other positive quality comes in to help kids navigate their lives. 
• An appropriate vocabulary: Ideally, the child reading should know most of the words, otherwise, they would be too confused to enjoy the book, however, some of the words could be more complicated to increase the reader’s vocabulary. 
• Good pictures: Most children’s books are picture books, so bad pictures just throw the whole book off. On the contrary, I can still imagine the caterpillar in The Hungry Caterpillar solely because I remember the unique drawings.
  To show some examples of these qualities in action, here are children’s books that not only I think fit these qualities, but were also my favorite in kindergarten.

 

Goodnight Moon
This is one of the first books I remember reading. For a brief recap, Goodnight Moon is a picture book where night falls and we have to say goodnight to all of the objects in the house and in the sky before finally going to bed. The plot is kind of nonexistent in the sense that there is no real action, but it does have a clear end, which is when we go to sleep.  The moral, while not super explicit, is also simple, being that we should be cognizant of everything in our surroundings and that we should say farewells to everyone before sleeping or leaving. The vocabulary is a little too basic because there are no words that a little kid wouldn’t know, but maybe that makes it a better bedtime story, where kids aren’t awake enough to learn new words. The illustrations, on the other hand, are very good.  On some of the pages, there’s a large amount of detail showing the objects being said good night too, contrasting with other pages which are just white, where it says, “Good night Nobody.” I think that the illustrations convey the lighthearted and almost sarcastic feel of the book. Overall, I think that this is a nice nighttime read, not too simple, but not too complicated.

The Little Engine That Could
The Little Engine That Could is a story where although the other engines thought they couldn’t pull a heavy train car over a hill, one engine stood up to the task and said to itself, “I think I can” over and over again until it pulled the car over the hill. I like the story. It’s easy for children to understand that someone succeeded in an impossible task through determination alone. And that lesson is very powerful, not only for children but arguably for teens and adults too. So powerful in fact, that according to my mom, after I read this book, I said “I think I can” and backflipped off of a couch unsuccessfully. The vocabulary is a little more varied than Goodnight Moon, but still appropriate for kids. As for the illustrations, they do their job of putting the child in the setting, but something about it didn’t strike me the same as Goodnight Moon. They still convey the perseverance of the train, which is ultimately the most important part of the book.

While I think that there are many more qualities that make good children’s books, I think that these are the most important because when I try to remember children’s books, these aspects stick the most. Regardless of how they’re analyzed, children’s books are a staple of cultures all over the world and many of our fondest memories. There are many great authors and illustrators, including Naperville North’s own Tom Champion, who brighten up the world every day by writing children’s books, and I hope that these books and their lessons keep being a part of our childhoods.