Top Ten All Time Favorite Children's Books

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Hello, again! This week's Top Ten Tuesday theme is "top ten all time favorite books in x genre." Something you may or may not know about me is that despite the fact that I've always enjoyed reading, it hasn't always been something I spent a lot of my time doing. In fact, I've only recently really started reading heavily. That being said, I didn't feel like I had enough history in any particular genre to create an "all time favorites" list so I had to get a little more creative. I've decided to compile a list of the ten(ish) children's books that I loved the most as a child or that have effected me the most in my life. Did that all make sense? Probably not. Let's get started anyway.

1. Any and all books by Kevin Henkes - Specifically Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, Chrysanthemum, and Julius, the baby of the world. When I was in first and second grade I have VIVID memories of "going to library" (AKA; The 30 minute period where our class would walk down to the library and pick out our two books to check out for the week.) I would venture to guess that I checked out a Kevin Henkes book literally every single week. These books are probably the number one, all time favorites that stand out to me from my childhood. I loved those little mice.
2. Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman - First things first, I didn't realize that this book wasn't written by Dr. Seuss himself until probably, like, a month ago. My mind was blown. Anyways, this book stands out to me because it's another one that I know I've read 5billion times in my life. My sister and I read this book (or, were read this book, rather) so much as children that my family, to this day, quotes it on a semi-weekly basis just as a running joke. "Do you like my hat?" "I do not. Good-by."
3. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault - I seriously do not know where I'm pulling all these titles from. They're flying back into my brain like I'm 6 years old again. Anyways, if you don't know this book, you probably live under a rock or had a lacking childhood. It's basically an alphabet learning book and it was possibly one of my favorite things ever as a kid.
4. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka - This book is ridiculous. But, I totally remember loving it. This may have been the very start of my thing for weird fairy tales and stories that were taken a little off track. This book is honestly just really cool and I wish I still had it. If you see it at the store just take a look at it for fun. I swear, it's great.
5. The Amelia Bedelia Series by Peggy Parish - Alright, I think everyone knows how great Amelia Bedelia is. If you didn't read these books as a kid, the premise is basically that Amelia is a maid who works for a rich couple, but Amelia is terrible at interpreting figures of speech and always takes things literally. She'll do things like "putting the lights out" by hanging the light bulbs on a clothes line. These books are just silly and I have fond memories of reading them when I was little.
6. The Junie B. Jones Series by Barbara Park - Junie B. Jones was my girl, oh my gosh. As far as I can remember, Junie B Jones books were probably the first chapter books I ever read when I was young. I loved this series and I always remember feeling so super accomplished when I finished one. It's so odd to think that I could now finish one of these books in a matter of minutes.
7. The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn - This book and the next one are two of the cutest books ever written. And, I owned both of them. The Kissing Hand features a mommy and baby raccoon. The mother raccoon kisses the baby raccoon's hand so that he will be brave enough to go to school. Wikipedia tells me that this book is often used to "reassure children upset by separation anxiety." That makes A LOT of sense looking back on my childhood.
8. Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney - This book goes right along with The Kissing Hand in my mind. This is literally just a picture book depicting a parent rabbit and a baby rabbit. The baby rabbit asks the adult rabbit to "Guess how much I love you" and they spend the book using larger and larger measurements to show how much they love one another. Cute, I know.
9. Bony Legs by Joanna Cole - On a VERY different note, we have this great little book. Bony Legs is scary. This is your warning if you're thinking about using this list to pick out books for your child (not that I think anyone's doing that because really.. my blog gets like 2 views a day), this book is a little bit terrifying. What I didn't realize until literally right now is that this book is about the Russian Mythical witch creature, Baba Yaga. So.. yeah. Scary. Despite the fact that this book is kind of freaky, it was one of my favorite, favorite, favorite books as a child and I used to read it all the time. It's about young Sasha who narrowly escapes Bony Legs, the witch. Goodreads' summary says "When a terrible witch vows to eat her for supper, a little girl escapes with the help of a mirror and a comb given to her by the witch's cat and dog." ... Charming.
10. The Three Little Kittens in the Enchanted Forest: A Pop-Up Adventure by Hilary Aaron and Jonathan Langley - Finally, we have this FANTASTIC BOOK. When we moved into the house I currently live in about 6 years ago, this book totally disappeared along with tons of other things. It was super unfortunate because ever since then I've thought about this book, like, roughly once a year. I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of it or find it anywhere online. Until TODAY! I tried really, really hard and with the help of my mom I figured out what it was called and actually found proof of it's existence. This is an extremely cool pop-up book. The pop-ups are so in depth and just.. phenomenal. It's essentially the story of the kittens who lost their mittens, but it also integrates a bunch of fairy tales and mystery. There's also a bird named rainbow and some awesome fantastical stuff. To put it simply, if you're a mother (or anyone really) and you take anything away from this Top Ten Tuesday, it's that you should find this book somewhere and buy it for your children because it's potentially my favorite children's book of. all. time.

And, there you have it. That Top Ten Tuesday was actually much more fun than I thought it would be to make. Here are some questions for you; If you do happen to be a mother, do you kids have any of these books? Do they love them as much as I did? And, for everyone, did you read any of these books as a child? I really would love to discuss all of this with some people, so don't hesitate to comment to tweet me @okletsread!