Moonbow FAQ: How to Buy Books Kids ACTUALLY Connect With?

Plus, how can adults reach kids without underestimating their ability to connect with art?

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Welcome to Moonbow’s new FAQ series!

I’m often sent emails, DMs, and text messages about kids’ books. I get questions like:

“What are some cool, well-designed board books for babies?”
"How do you find so many great used kids’ books? I get so overwhelmed!”
"Can you share books boys love that are similar to Dog Man?”
"I need some funny picture books that are easy to read at bedtime and will entertain and engage my two-year-old and me. Can you help?”

I’m always happy to help answer these, but I’ve never felt inclined to share them on Moonbow because there are many people and places that have answered these questions already and are experts in teaching people this stuff. I want Moonbow to be different. I want it to be a place where adults can come and think deeply about kids’ books.

But here’s the thing: whenever I point people to another website, person, or library, they say: “That’s great, but I want your opinion.”

The FAQ section is a great way to preserve my vision for Moonbow while giving my readers what they want. I recently updated my ABOUT section, which reminded me that the end goal is to get kids reading, and preferably to get them reading books that they actually want to read. But how do we do that? How do we know what books to put in front of them? Well, that’s what I’m going to try to answer today, thanks to a wonderful question from Maria, the owner of Parkette, a fantastic children’s shop in Ontario, Canada.

Check out all the incredible picture books she sells!

If you’d like to ask me a question, you can email me at moonbow.books@substack.com, leave a comment on an article or a Note, or send me a message.

OK, on to Maria’s great questions:

“I think a difficulty I face as an adult who loves picture books is how to make sure that what I order [for Parkette] will actually connect with kids. Often, the reasons why I loved certain books as a kid are not clear to the adult me. I would love to explore that and how we, as adults, can reach kids without pandering, dumbing down things, or underestimating their ability to connect with art.”

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Whether you own a bookstore, are an educator, a librarian, a parent, or simply someone giving a picture book as a gift, the main concern is you want the kid to like it! But taste is subjective, and kids are not a monolith. Adults don’t all like the same books, so why would kids?

You mentioned that some of the reasons you loved certain books as a kid are a mystery to you as an adult. I think most adults feel this way. When you’re a kid, you usually aren’t concerned with why you love a book; you just do. A lot of the work is done subconsciously. I bet if you were to unpack those childhood favorites now, you would uncover some of those mysterious reasons.

Kids tend to know how they feel about things, even if they can’t fully articulate those feelings in words. Art is a great opportunity to get kids talking about feelings and about art itself. In fact, kids are much better (and braver) than adults at talking about art.

Have you ever read the book reviews on Spaghetti Book Club? It’s my favorite resource for children’s literary criticism. (Step aside The New York Times!)

Here’s a review of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown:

“This story is about going to bed and saying goodnight. It tells about all the things in the room and the author says goodnight to each thing. This book also has rhymes in it.

I like this story because it has nice pictures. My favorite part is when it says, ‘Goodnight nobody.’ That made me laugh because that page was blank. I think it is a nice story. This story reminded me of going to sleep at home in my bed.

If you like quiet stories that make you feel good, you should read Goodnight Moon.”

This was written by LA, who’s 6.

Kids are the best critics.

Goodnight Moon is a strange, experimental book, yet it’s one of the best-selling picture books of all time. Why? According to six-year-old LA, it makes them feel good; it reminds them of going to sleep in their bed—it’s comforting. That’s an attractive answer to adults. We want to shelter, protect, and comfort children, and we should. But if we were to talk more to LA about why it’s comforting, there may be things that come up that make some adults uncomfortable.

LA mentions the “nice pictures” and the “rhymes,” and she gets the subtle humor—all of which are important. The great green room is a familiar and reassuring space to children: there are toys, a brush, a clock, a doll house, socks, and a bowl full of mush—things most children see and interact with daily, and the hypnotic rhythm of the text lulls children into a deep, almost hallucinatory state. But there are dark, mysterious things happening, too. Who’s the old lady whispering "hush”? Why do things disappear and reappear? And what about “Goodnight nobody?” “Goodnight air?” “Goodnight noises everywhere?” This brilliant book acknowledges children’s fear of going to sleep, which is connected to the fear of death. It acknowledges and validates their fears without pandering, explaining, or teaching anything. It taps into feelings.

Part of the reason adults struggle to talk about art is that, at a certain age, they’ve learned to ignore art they don’t understand, or that makes them uncomfortable. They no longer have time for questions; they want answers. And, as you mentioned, they underestimate a child’s ability to connect with art, especially difficult art. They think: if I don’t understand this, there’s no way a kid will. Wrong. Children can tolerate ambiguity and peculiarity much better than most adults.

Those of us who have kids or interact with kids frequently know that kids ask tough questions. They ask the real questions. But these questions don’t have easy answers and can’t be fully explained.

As much as we would like to reassure children with concrete answers, a better approach is to get them thinking of their own answers and from their own point of view, which is very different from an adult’s.

The fact that you’re concerned with finding books that don’t pander, dumb things down, or underestimate kids means you already get it. The key is finding picture books that speak to kids as they are, not as adults want them to be.

If your bullshit detector goes off, don’t buy the book.

Okay, now I’m going to contradict myself and say something that may surprise you and Moonbow readers: let kids read bad books.

Kids don’t become lifelong readers because adults restrict their reading choices; they learn to love reading by having more choices. For every fantastic kids’ book I own, I have five terrible ones. You may be thinking, that’s way too many books for my house! Fair. That’s when the library comes in handy.

The truth is, a good book is a book a child wants to read.

Do I want to read Who Would Win: Coyote vs. Dingo to my son for the 50th time? Absolutely not. Am I going to write about it on Moonbow? No. (Wait, I just did!) But he loves it and it makes him want to read. My son also thinks marshmallows taste good with pasta; we literally have different tastes. My job is to guide and enrich his literary (and dietary choices), but not to tell him what he thinks is good or bad. But I can introduce him to books (and food) that I think he would enjoy but might not pick out himself.

Just because kids should be allowed to read bad books doesn’t mean we should be okay with making them bad books.

As someone who writes about the art of children’s books, my aim is to describe them in a way that encourages adults to see new things in them. I’m not really concerned with whether a book is good or bad for kids. I try to take a larger view. How can I help adults recognize when a book is thoughtfully conceived and visually stunning? When it’s a work of art?

That sounds pretentious. But pretentiousness isn’t all good or all bad—it’s a little of both. The trick is to find some sort of balance. I use the same approach when recommending books: sometimes, it’s because it’s a work of art; sometimes, it’s because I simply know that a kid will enjoy it. The best scenario is when both those things are true.

But to better answer your question, let me try to define what I think makes a children’s book “good.”

A popular and long-held belief is that a good children’s book has to have a moral or teach a message. Is it “right” or “healthy” for children? That’s fine, but it can’t be the only measure of what’s good. There should also be books that ask questions, stimulate their imaginations, help them find meaning, acknowledge the hardships of being a kid, or just make them laugh. There should be a broad range of genres and forms, just as there should be a broad range of criteria for quality.

There’s also the belief that a children’s book is only good if both children and adults like it. C. S. Lewis, famous for his children’s fantasy series “The Chronicles of Narnia,” felt that children’s books only enjoyed by children are probably bad books.  

In his essay, “On Three Ways for Writing for Children,” he describes what some children’s authors get wrong:

“…both [authors] conceived writing for children as a special department of ‘giving the public what it wants….There is no question of “children” conceived as a strange species whose habits you have “made up” like an anthropologist or a commercial traveler. Nor, I suspect, would it be possible, thus face to face, to regale the child with things calculated to please it but regarded by yourself with indifference or contempt. The child, I am certain, would see through that. In any personal relation the two participants modify each other. You would become slightly different because you were talking to a child and the child would become slightly different because it was being talked to by an adult. A community, a composite personality, is created and out of that the story grows.” (Lewis is a smart guy. He has many interesting things to say on this topic. I recommend reading the entire essay.)

You and I already know that good children’s books don’t pander to children, but do they have to be liked by both adults and children in order to be considered good? I think that depends on whether we’re talking about children’s books or classic children’s literature. There are plenty of good children’s books that aren’t going to become part of the literary canon, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good, and it doesn’t mean kids won’t love them.

When asked what we should look for in a picture book, the famous children’s author-illustrator Maurice Sendak said,

“Orginality of vision. Someone who has something to say and a fresh way of saying it. Do not look for pyrotechnics, for someone who can make a big slambang picture book out of very little. Look for the artist who thinks idiosyncratically.”

I mean, you can’t argue that. When in doubt, turn to Sendak.

Phew! This was a very long-winded way to say, give kids choices. Read and interact with kids as much as possible. Develop a taste for what you think makes a good children’s book. If they like it, great. If they don’t, have another book ready and waiting for them.

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You might like:

Margaret Wise Brown and the Art of Paying Attention

The Books & Bookstores We Loved This Summer

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Happy Independent Bookstore Day!

Independent Bookstore Day is a one-day national party held at indie bookstores across the country. Go show your support for the incredible folks who help shape the lives of readers!

Here are a few of my Bay Area favorites:

• Hicklebee’s — San Jose

• Linden Tree Books — Los Altos

• Kepler’s Books — Menlo Park

• Green Apple Books — San Francisco

• East Bay Booksellers — Oakland