@CLCanadyArts I LOVED serendipity books!
@Kasey-Snow I also loved Chris Van Allsburg, Peter Stier, Steven Kellogg, and Tommie dePaola , as well as the alphabet books by Jerry Pallotta. Also Graeme Base... too many to name I guess.
And one of my all time faves to read to my kids is/was TheTale of the Three Trees by Angela Elwell Hunt. I get choked up every time I read it.
@xin-li my 6 year old boy really likes rules of summer. He spends ages looking at the pictures and the text is just about right for him to read out loud.
I really love Shaun tans work too.
@chrisaakins I love tale of three trees. I remember the year my mother gave that to me for Christmas.
@CLCanadyArts I agree both of these series made an impact on me as well.
@Kasey-Snow i really love The Paper bag Princess
I just checked out 20 books, most of them coming off of this list you guys have helped me start, thank you so much! I'm looking forward to digging into them this weekend.
As always, feel free to post in this thread as you think of impactful children's books or as you discover them!
Just to update this list for anyone else looking for impactful children's books: I just read "Great Big Things" by Kate Hoefler (with gorgeous illustrations by Noah Klocek) and "Seed and Trees" by Brandon Walden, and both were really good! The second definitely had a more intentional takeaway, but I liked the build up in Great Big Things to a very simple but true statement.
Miss Nelson is missing!
But its very old at this point! Lol
@Laurel-Aylesworth bloom arrived at ours today all the way from America. Woohoo
anything by Barbara Reid (Two by two and Foxed Walked ALone might be my favorites but also her Night before christmas one) or robert Munsch/michael Marthchenko (love you forever as one example but I love Martchenko illustrations even tho he didn't do that particular book!)
Guess how much I love you
Click, Clack , Moo was so funny!!!
The Cow who clucked - love those illustrations!
The Broken ornament by Tony Diterlizzi
my kids loved The Bone series of books and we all loved Tintin too. And Calvin and Hobbes (goes without saying really!)))))
I'm sure there's more but I am forgetting , might write more later, these ones just popped to top of my head!
@peteolczyk It's so good!
I like Usborne books, from UK
@CLCanadyArts yes me too! The Berenstain Bears written and illustrated by Stan and Jan Berenstain husband & wife duo (and now their son) and also the series Franklin the Turtle illustrated by Brenda Clark are probably the two most influential series of picture books for me. Both with pretty clever illustration styles (B. Bears did some out-of-the-box things I really appreciate with their double-page spreads) and moral lessons of substance not just cute.
I recall trying to read this book of collected fairy tales when I was in elementary school, but the writing was a bit of a slog... I was much much more interested in the art. Janet and Anne Graham Johnstone were the sibling artists, and their work made a HUGE impact on me in ways that I didn't really understand until I grew up.
Just to update this list for anyone else looking for impactful children's books: I just read "Great Big Things" by Kate Hoefler (with gorgeous illustrations by Noah Klocek) and "Seed and Trees" by Brandon Walden, and both were really good! The second definitely had a more intentional takeaway, but I liked the build up in Great Big Things to a very simple but true statement.
