Finding Comfort in a Book

Diana Huss Green, Founder of Parents' Choice, called upon a group of longtime Parents' Choice friends - critics, teachers, librarians, moms and dads for help giving families some "time out" from the world. Her criteria for the group's suggested list of Read Aloud Together Comfort Books follow:

Each book must have a sustaining skeleton of universal moral values. Kindness, truth, love, and decency -- all the life basics you learned from the one or two people you've most respected in your whole life.

After that the stories need a beginning, middle and an end, a satisfying end. Humor of course will add to the richness but not before or even up close to fully rounded characters, a narrative voice of unwavering goodness and a tone of unwavering courage.

A tidy little world in which virtue is rewarded and evil is punished? Not necessarily. We, and our children are too sophisticated for that. But not too sophisticated for a rollicking good story to divert our overburdened souls.

We hope you enjoy the results.

Ages 4- 8 Years

A Child's Garden of Verses
By Robert Louis Stevenson

A Hatful of Seuss
By Dr. Seuss

Frog and Toad are Friends
By Arnold Lobel

George and Martha
By James Marshall

Mama Elizabeti
By Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen, Illustrated by Christy Hale

Mailing May
By Michael O. Tunnell, Illustrated by Ted Rand

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
By Virginia Lee Burton

Millions of Cats
By Wanda Gag

Nessa's Fish
By Nancy Luenn, Illustrated by Neil Waldman

Not So Fast Songololo
By Niki Daly

Now One Foot, Now the Other
By Tomi de Paola

Pinkerton Behave
By Steven Kellogg

Tales of Peter Rabbit
By Beatrix Potter

The Tenth Good Thing About Barney
By Judith Viorst

The Birchbark House
By Louise Erdrich

The Nutshell Library
By Maurice Sendak

The People Could Fly – American Black Folk Tales
By Virginia Hamilton

The Real Mother Goose
By Blanche Fisher Wright

The Stories Julian Tells
By Ann Cameron

The Story of Ferdinand
By Munro Leaf

Ten, Nine, Eight
By Molly Bang

String Bean’s Trip to the Shining Sea
By Vera B. Williams

The Velveteen Rabbit
By Margery Williams Bianco

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears
By Verna Aardema

 

Ages 9-12 Years

Adventures of Pinocchio
By Carlo Collodi

A Wrinkle in Time
By Madeleine L'Engle

Betsy-Tacy
By Maude Hart Lovelace

Charlotte’s Web
By E.B. White

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
By Ian Fleming

How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have?: And Other Tales
by Julius Lester

Mary Poppins
By P.L. Travers

MC Higgins the Great
By Virginia Hamilton

See You Around, Sam!
By Lois Lowry

The Book of Three
By Lloyd Alexander

The Complete Tales & Poems of Winnie the Pooh
By A. A. Milne

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
By C.S. Lewis

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick
By Chris Van Allsburg

The Phantom Tollbooth
By Norton Juster

The Princess and the Goblin
By George MacDonald

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963
By Christopher Paul Curtis

Through the Mickle Woods
By Valiska Gregory