Not everyone will like everything. Just as preschoolers assert their preferences in terms of what to wear, what to eat, and what to play, they have their opinions about what to read. Even when kids are in the toddler phase, they tend to have a book that their caregivers could recite by heart due to having repeated in ad nauseum. (In our case, this was Moo! Baa! La La La! by Sandra Boynton ).
Imagine my surprise to find that my daughter, the child of someone with her graduate academic certificate in storytelling, loves juvenile non-fiction. For some of the most simple, we read cover to cover. For others, though, we read some captions while we look at the illustrations, photographs, and diagrams. (In her Pre-K orientation, the teachers emphasized the importance for parents who are not literate in the language of a book to share stories with their children by discussing the pictures). We talk about the history and biology that have come to life in amazing pop-up volumes. Books about ancient Egypt, dinosaurs, plants, and animals have been the big winners at our home. My daughter tends to be very tactile; she wants to feel the world. For her, books as instructions for basic science experiments and crafts are as useful or more so than those where the entire experience is on the pages.
Two books at my home that sparked conversation and nursed my daughter's intrigue are new selections from the Insiders Alive series. They have pop-up and other interactive features, but the writing is also informative and relevant. The ones we have enjoyed are: Earthquakes and Volcanoes by Anita Ganeri and Ancient Egypt by Robert Coupe.
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