A guide book for selecting books for the young

Anita Silvey has written "100 Best Books for Children". Ms. Silvey´s list includes books that should be part of every child´s literary background.  Books such as Margaret Wise Brown´s "Goodnight Moon", Virginia Lee Burton´s "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel", Dr. Seuss´ "The Cat in the Hat", Laura Ingalls Wilder´s "Little House in the Big Woods" and Kate DeCamillo´s "Because of Winn-Dixie".

It is not just a list, it provides the titles, age ranges (preschool to age 12) and plots, she adds interesting tidbits of information about each book. For example, Robert McCloskey, who wrote and illustrated "Make Way for Ducklings", kept ducks in his bathtub to observe how they behaved. For the "Little House" manuscript, Laural Ingalls provided the information, and her daughter, Rose, translated it into fiction.  It took a year for Theodor Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss) to write the text of "The Cat in the Hat", which depended on only 220 words was published in 1957 and became the top 10 best-selling children´s hardcover books of all time.