We have a ton of children’s books, too many actually. I hate shopping, but the one thing I can manage to shop for with great enthusiasm is children’s books.
For many months, I have immersed myself in trying to organize our books and come up with a system for making our book collection accessible to the boys without being overwhelming.
To help in this quest, I purchased The New York Times Parent’s Guide To The Best Books For Children by Eden Ross Lipson. The book hosts over 1,700 titles and several indexes listing the books by title, author, illustrator, age appropriateness, subject, and more.
Using this book, I have weeded out our book collection and organized it based on the age appropriateness. The books are divided into Infant+, Toddler+, Preschool+, Elementary+, Middle School+, and Young Adult.
I have packed away our Elementary+, Middle School+ and Young Adult books until the boys are older. I am storing the Preschool+ books in file crates until the boys are ready for them. We will be reading through the Infant+ and Toddler+ books in our collection.
To organize the Infant+ and Toddler+ books so they will be read and I can keep track of when they are read, I have entered the titles and age level into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. We have about 150 books for these age groups. I then added a filter so I can easily sort the books by age level. As I go along, I may add themes to the spreadsheet, but my number one goal right now is making the books usable and easily accessible to the boys.
After entering the books into the spreadsheet, I went through the list and pulled out the boys favorite books. There were 20 titles that they seem to love having read to them. I then placed them in a book basket that I will keep out for them so they can read the books anytime they want. On a weekly basis, I will swap out a quarter of the books, in our case 5, with other titles from our collection. I am hoping by doing this, the boys will keep some familiar well loved titles at their fingertips for their reading enjoyment, but I will also be able to rotate in other titles that will hopefully become favorites.
Here is what we have in our book basket for this week:
- Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? written by Bill Martin, Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle (ITP)***
- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom written by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault and illustrated by: Lois Ehlert (TP)
- David Gets In Trouble written and illustrated by David Shannon (TPE)
- Freight Train written and illustrated by Donald Crews (TP)—Caldecott Honor Book
- Goodnight Gorilla written and illustrated by Peggy Rathmann (TP)
- Goodnight Moon written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd (ITP)
- I Like Bugs written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by G. Brian Karas (TP)
- More More More Said the Baby written and illustrated by Vera B. Williams (ITP)—Caldecott Honor Book
- No David! written and illustrated by David Shannon (TPE)—Caldecott Honor Book
- Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? written by Bill Martin, Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle (TP)
- Sheep In a Jeep written by Nancy Shaw and illustrated by Margot Apple (TP)
- The Carrot Seed written by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by Crockett Johnson (TP)
- The Eye Book written by Dr. Seuss and illustrated by Joe Mathieu (TP)
- The Foot Book written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss (TP)
- The Shape of Me and Other Stuff written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss (TP)
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar written and illustrated by Eric Carle (TP)
- There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly written and illustrated by Simms Taback (TPE)—Caldecott Honor Book
- Watch Your Step Mr. Rabbit! written and illustrated by Richard Scarry (TP)
- We’re Going On a Bear Hunt written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (TP)
- Yo! Yes! written and illustrated by Chris Raschaka (TPE)—Caldecott Honor Book
***In parentheses I have listed the appropriate age range for each book. I=Infant, T=Toddler, P=Preschooler, E=Elementary, M=Middle School, YA=Young Adult.