How to choose Beautiful Children’s Books

A curation of quality and excellence for Age 0-5

Walk into any mainstream book shop and the books that are offered to children are atrocious across the board.

Not only are the illustrations poor in their quality of artwork, the substance itself is extremely dumbed down. Children’s literature is at once poor in quality and permeated with political propaganda promoting marxist ideas.

Publishers seem to believe that just because a book is marketed toward children, quality no longer matters. This makes sense for a world that views children as an expensive lifestyle choice for old fashioned people rather than human beings to protect and nurture.

Here are some examples:

Despite the poor quality that is offered in stores, intelligent and motivated parents are aware of the necessity of beauty and good writing for the healthy development of a child’s spirit and intellect. As such, many of us have found excellent books regardless, published in the past, by excellent writers and artists who respected not only their craft, but the children who would read their books.

I have written here about why Beauty matters to the child and here about how the quality of literature literally shapes our minds. Not all reading is good reading and in fact, it is better for a child to read nothing than to read poor quality, ugly books.

The best place to find good children’s books is in used book shops, but even then, it is important to know what you are looking for. Busy mothers don’t always have the time to scour book shops, so, I have compiled a list for some excellent books for you here that you can easily find online.

Here it is!

Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter is a writer and illustrator who lived in the mid 1800s in Britain’s gorgeous Lake District. In this picturesque world, Potter crafted some of the loveliest tales about the little woodland animals she observed so keenly as a child in the countryside. The stories are written in complete, eloquent sentences that will stimulate a child’s acquisition of good vocabulary and speech habits, yes, even before they are speaking! The stories, although complex and often dark, will interest parent and baby alike. Modern pedagogy has us convinced that babies are only capable of attending to three words on each page. This is just not true. In my experience with my own children, children do attend to these wonderful stories. Potter’s beautiful and whimsical water colour illustrations are also sure to delight any child and train their taste toward beauty and goodness.

Raymond Briggs

Raymond Briggs is another excellent British artist who only recently passed away in 2022. His stories are silent and whimsical tales. “The Snowman” by Briggs has been repeated in our home hundreds of times now (the 1982 movie is also excellent by the way). Not only are the stories wholesome and beautiful, but the illustrations themselves have a magical, otherwordly quality to them that would enchant any child and would help any adult to begin to see like a child again as well. His illustrations are also all hand-drawn in pencil crayon. Unlike Potter these stories are not text-heavy but the images are things that a child can look at for a long time and will nurture his or her imagination for years to come.

Judith Kerr

I am now in serious danger of appearing to be an anglophile (guilty as charged), but here is yet another English writer and illustrator who has contributed beautiful work to the genre of children’s literature for littles. Our copies of Mog the Cat and Tiger Who Came to Tea are so thoroughly abused, I mean ‘loved’ that I have mended them multiple times. They are favourites for bed time, for tantrums, for distractions at airports and in airplanes. My 1yo daughter’s fifth word ever was “Debbie” a character from the story.

Kerr’s stories are much simpler than Beatrix Potter but they are still very well written. They are humours and light-hearted and a lot of the humour is in the illustrations themselves! The illustrations are high quality, colourful and build up a detailed world that helps young children identify objects and practice words by looking and pointing. These offer great opportunities for playing “I spy!” as well. These are sure to be well loved by children aged 0-5 and adults too will find them entertaining to read, no matter how many times you go back.

Janet and Allan Ahlberg

What’s that? More English authors? Maybe the rainy weather on that grey island had some drop of genius in its clouds that made it so prolific in its production of great artists and writers. Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s books, especially The Jolly Postman, and Each Peach Pear Plum (which my 2yo adorably calls “Each Peach Bum”) are some of the most excellent children’s books I’ve ever seen. These books are good because they tell the whole story in rhyme and meter. This not only helps train the child’s ear for rhyme and rhythm, but it lends itself to memorisation, which little children are eager to do. The stories all centre around the characters of nursery rhymes and the rich illustrations are so detailed that little children will love to pore over them by themselves, even when reading time is over. This is excellent for parents who occasionally like to cook and read a book without a baby clinging to their legs for attention.

Elsa Beskow

Phew, let’s increase the diversity around here by introducing someone exotic like a Swede. Elsa Beskow is someone whose work I only recently discovered thanks to one of my readers who sent me a tip. I appreciate that very much because Elsa’s illustrations are so unbelievably stunning. I think her and Beatrix Potter are the most artistically beautiful of all the authors mentioned here. The stories as well are so unique and lovely. I read one about a little girl named Rosalind who has a pet deer that gets stolen by a King. I think because these stories are based in the mythology and culture of Sweden, they are less well known to the anglo-sphere. I truly love her stories because they are wholesome and interesting. The sentence strucutre is also complex enough that it will encourage the development of good speech.

That’s the interesting thing about good quality children’s literature, it is not boring to adults! It brings adults back into the world of children as well and this is how parenting little children should be: we give up a bit of adulthood to meet our children in fairy land for a while.

Hans Christian Andersen

And to complete our DEI initiative toward the end of this essay, the final author I will introduce to you is a Danish writer you might well be familiar with already. Hans Christian Andersen is the author of many of the most iconic fairy tales of the western world. He wrote many classics such as Cinderella, The Snow Queen, The Little Match Girl, The Wild Swans, and The Little Mermaid. His stories are interesting because they are not at all what Disney nefariously twisted them into for marketing to a secular, materialistic audience. For example, did you know the reason The Little Mermaid wanted to be human was so that she could get a human soul and go to heaven one day? And not because she wanted to know what “dingle-hoppers” are or to marry Prince Eric? These stories teach virtue overtly, directly and beautiful. They have courage that we as parents might lack in this world of secularism where we are made to feel ridiculous for loving God. Andersen did not illustrate his own stories but there are many excellent classic illustrators who did and I just love seeing the different interpretations. When children are a little older it can even be fun to get them to come up with their own illustrations.

You Have Free Will: Choose Beauty, Choose Goodness

Reading to our children, even when they are only a few months old, is an excellent way to get into the habit of forcing yourself to slow down to the pace of the child. Children like to snuggle with you, they like to hear your voice, they like to look at beautiful pictures and if you read them beautiful words and stories as well, it will impress their spirit with goodness and love that will equip them for anything else they need to navigate in life.

My children have often fallen asleep in my lap when I read to them. They have surprised me by indicating to me that they understand so much more from these stories than we can possibly know. When we respect children by giving them excellence and quality, we are showing them love. Let us not hinder children with mediocrity and ugliness.

Along the way, as we read to our children high quality books, we ourselves will rejuvenate and recalibrate our love for the tales of children and recover some of the innocence and virtue we wish to protect in our babies.

I hope that this list helps you to choose beauty and wholesomeness, in a world that promotes ugliness and depravity.