The Listening Years

Peter disobeys his mother, gets into Mr. McGregor's garden, loses his coat, and is put to bed with chamomile tea. Beatrix Potter's whole shelf is the standard for what a small book for a small child can be. Buy the small format with the original watercolors.

A pair of mallards looks for a home in Boston and finds it on an island in the Public Garden. McCloskey drew every duck from life. The bronzes of Mrs. Mallard and her eight ducklings are still in the Garden where the book ends.

Sal and her mother pick blueberries on a Maine hillside; on the other side a bear cub and his mother are doing the same. Kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk into the tin pail. The most perfect picture book ever drawn in two-color blue.

A young rabbit says goodnight to every object in the great green room before he sleeps. The ritual of naming the world and letting it go. Read at bedtime and the words become a kind of prayer.

Max, sent to bed without supper, sails to where the wild things are, becomes their king, and sails home to find his dinner still warm. Sendak's account of a child's anger and the reliability of being loved back.

Four short books — Are Friends, Together, All Year, Days With — about a green frog and a brown toad who love each other. The first independent reader for many children, and the gentlest portrait of a long friendship in American literature.

Twelve little girls in two straight lines in an old house in Paris that was covered with vines. Madeline is the smallest and the bravest. Bemelmans paints the city as a child remembers it.

A young bull in Spain prefers to sit and smell the flowers rather than fight in the bullring. Robert Lawson's pen-and-ink Spain is part of the book's pleasure. Quietly, one of the gentlest arguments against violence in American letters.

Mike and his steam shovel Mary Anne dig the cellar of the town hall of Popperville in a single day. About loyalty to a tool, and what to do when the world stops needing what you do well.

A father takes his daughter out into the cold woods at night to call for a great horned owl. Almost no plot, almost no dialogue. The book a child reaches for when they want the quiet kind.

DePaola's retelling of a Calabrian folk tale: an old woman with a magic pasta pot in a southern Italian village, and her helper Big Anthony, who cannot follow directions. About paying attention, and the consequences of not.

A boy named Peter wakes to a snowy Brooklyn morning and goes out: makes a snow angel, drags a stick, climbs a small mountain, puts a snowball in his pocket. Keats's Caldecott winner, and the first picture book from a major American publisher with a Black child as its hero.

A young donkey finds a pebble that grants wishes, panics in front of a hungry lion, and wishes himself into a rock. His parents look for him through every season. About being lost and being found.

A peddler walks through town with seventeen caps stacked on his head — "Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!" He naps under a tree and wakes to find them gone. The monkey-in-the-tree resolution is one of the great read-aloud payoffs.

The Reys' small monkey and the Man with the Yellow Hat. The original 1941 book and the half-dozen the Reys wrote themselves. The small format and the gentle line drawings have lasted; the framing has not aged as well.

A young elephant whose mother is killed by a hunter escapes to Paris, is taken in by an Old Lady, learns to wear a green suit, and returns to be crowned king of the elephants. De Brunhoff's drawing is among the most beautiful in children's literature.

A stuffed rabbit becomes real because a boy loves him so completely. The Skin Horse's speech about what "real" means is the heart of the book. Read it aloud; some children weep, and that is part of it.

A four-year-old in pajamas takes his purple crayon for a walk and draws the world as he needs it — a moon, a path, a dragon, a bed back home. Crockett Johnson's case for the imagination, made in nine simple colors.

A small bear lives in the toy department of a big city store, missing a button on his overalls. A little girl named Lisa, with her own savings, comes back the next day to take him home. About being chosen.

A picture-book Bible — the *Catholic Children's Bible* from Loyola, the *Jesus Storybook Bible* by Sally Lloyd-Jones, the older *Golden Children's Bible*, or your tradition's standard. The whole story in two hundred pages of pictures: creation, the patriarchs, Moses, David, the prophets, the gospels, Pentecost. Read a story a night.

A small hymnal kept at home — Wee Sing Bible Songs, or the children's section of your parish or family hymnal. The printed page lets a child see the words they are already singing. Half a dozen hymns from the book is enough to begin with.

A small mouse with very large ears in a castle, a princess named Pea, a rat in the dungeon, a serving girl named Miggery Sow. DiCamillo turns to the reader throughout — "Reader, do you remember…" Read aloud, one chapter a night for two months. The form is the lap kind of story before it is the independent kind.

Milne's verses for and about Christopher Robin. Halfway Down, Vespers, Disobedience, Us Two. Read them aloud and a few will lodge for life.

The first poems a child knows by heart. Hickory dickory dock, Jack and Jill, Mary had a little lamb. Read aloud at bedtime; sing the ones with tunes. The Iona and Peter Opie edition is the scholarly one; any good illustrated edition does the work.

The first thing many children cook on their own. Crack the eggs into a bowl, beat with a fork, butter the pan, stir gently with a wooden spoon, salt at the end, eat with toast. The first morning they make breakfast for the family is a step.

A weekend afternoon with a parent and a rolling pin — sugar cookies, gingerbread men, or a Christmas batch. The flour, the cutters, the tray, the smell, the cooling rack. The first kitchen ritual a child looks forward to.

The Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, and a guardian-angel prayer — said with a parent every night until the child can say them alone in the dark. The first liturgy a child owns.

Shepherd, angel, sheep, or one of the wise men. The whole story rehearsed and walked through, in a costume the child remembers for the rest of their life.

A bean or a sunflower in a paper cup of soil on the kitchen windowsill. Water it. Watch it. The first lesson in how living things actually work and how long they take.

Hard-boiled eggs and dye on the kitchen table the week before Easter. The egg as the closed tomb broken open. The older Ukrainian and Polish pysanky traditions use wax and pattern and take days; a child's first version is dye, vinegar, and a wax crayon. The basket goes to Mass on Easter morning.

A symphonic story in which each character is a different instrument: Peter the strings, the bird a flute, the duck an oboe, the wolf the French horns. The first orchestra a child should meet. Try the David Bowie narration, or Boris Karloff.

Fourteen short movements, one per animal — the lion, the elephant, the swan, the aquarium. The Swan, played on cello, is among the most beautiful three minutes of music ever written.

A handful of hymns learned by ear before they are understood — Jesus Loves Me, This Little Light of Mine, All Things Bright and Beautiful, Praise to the Lord the Almighty, the Doxology. Sung at family prayer, in the car, at bedtime. The first music the child owns.

By Christmas Eve a child of six should know — by heart — Silent Night, Hark! the Herald Angels Sing, Away in a Manger, O Come All Ye Faithful, and We Three Kings. Add O Holy Night if a parent in the house can carry it. The carols anchor the season more deeply than the tree does.

A small nativity set out at home in December — Joseph, Mary, the infant, the shepherds and their lamb, the wise men placed a little farther off until Epiphany. St. Francis built the first one at Greccio in 1223. The figures live in a child's hands for a month.