Books: Our first favorite books

On the photo: Gerda Muller board book series – Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn.

You may have tangible wealth untold; caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be. I had a mother who read to me. — Strickland Gillian

We introduced Ale to books probably on the second month of his life. Our very first book was a cloth book where he could touch and squish different pages. I was trying to find something beautiful and organic at the time, but without much success. Now, I’m thinking it’d be a fun DYI project 🙂

But by the time Ale was about 5 months old I came across these absolutely lovely board books by Gerda Muller. These became our first real books and more than a year later they are still among his favorites!

I believe it is important that illustrations in books for the youngest readers should be neither primitive nor abstract. Abstract-like images make it hard to relate them to the real world. And primitive images don’t do much for child’s sense of esthetics and craftsmanship. So, I was especially happy to discover books by Gerda Muller.

This uniquely talented children’s author creates hand-drawn illustrations that are beautiful, realistic and full of wonderful little details. In each book she not only helps a child to discover ways to enjoy each season, but also accustoms a child to loving and caring for nature around them.

We ended up eventually collecting all Gerda Muller books I could get my hands on and each one of them is among the favorites. Ale loves looking over them again and again, discovering new details and new information as he is growing up. While the books in this post are for the youngest little readers there are other books by this wonderful author which are relevant to children of older ages as well as toddlers. I plan to feature feature each one of them on my blog later, but for now just wanted to list a few of them, in case you are interested in books for an older child.

• A Year Around the Great Oak – a story of children exploring forest, learning of change of seasons in the forest and the animals that live there
• How Does My Garden Grow? – great book teaching about different things one can grown in the garden and little creatures that live there
• Where Do They Go When It Rains? – a cute story about different animals and where they take shelter when it rains
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears – not your usual Goldilocks story. It is really wonderful with a good lesson at the end. It’s been out latest bedtime favorite story.