Literary artist Maria Popova, the brilliant mind behind BrainPickings, has paid equal attention to the wisdom found in children’s books as she does to the genius of today’s most celebrated writers. Throughout the years, she graced her audience with a cornucopia of wonderful, timeless lists about how these titles, previously often seen as only for the limited scope of a child’s understanding, could hold sapience that speaks even to the oldest human in existence.
Here, we have compiled some remarkable titles that shed insight on diversity, friendship, love, and life’s most abiding essence.
Sidewalk Flowers by poet JonArno Lawson and illustrator Sydney Smith
This wonderfully illustrated picture book “tells the wordless story of a little girl on her way home with her device-distracted father, a contemporary Little Red Riding Hood walking through the urban forest. Along the way, she collects wildflowers and leaves them as silent gifts for her fellow participants in this pulsating mystery we call life — the homeless man sleeping on a park bench, the sparrow having completed its earthly hours, the neighbor’s dog and, finally, her mother’s and brothers’ hair.”
Home illustrator and children’s book author Carson Ellis
In the impossibly wonderful book, Carson Ellis presents an imaginative taxonomy of houses and a celebration of the wildly different kinds of people who call them home.
And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
It tells the heartening true story of Roy and Silo — two male chinstrap penguins at the Central Park Zoo. Roy and Silo fell in love in 1998 and started a family, raising little Tango — the zoo’s first and only baby-girl with two daddies.
Does My Goldfish Know Who I Am?
In a widely insightful collective, scientists and writers answer little kids’ big questions about how life works.
Hug Me animator-turned-children’s-book-author Simona Ciraolo
A sweet story about a young cactus named Felipe, who longs for such softness of contact in a family that sees emotional expression as a sign of weakness.
