Books. Exclamation Point.

If there is one material thing that will help our girl the most to become a strong, intelligent, compassionate woman, it is books. Sandi and I are in love with our books and some of our best childhood memories came from reading our favorite books and learning more about the world and imagining the fantastic, without the intellectual passivity that television allows. To this end, Sandi and I are planning on constructing a most wonderful library for our child. We could never have too many of the right kinds of books. 

We are not quite sure of the best place to start, but since Baby is a long way from reading herself, we have started with a focus on picture books to look at and fairytales (the original folk versions, not the commercial Disney versions) for us to read to her. Sandi and I plan to start reading extensively to our girl as early as possible, and fairy tales are great in creating little worlds that are fully evocative, imaginative, morally instructive, and illuminating. They are usually short, easy to read, but with a linguistic and conceptual difficulty that will provide years of new learnings with more reading. We have placed some of what especially caught our eye in an Amazon Wish List, but in general, we like the Pantheon Library of Fairytales and Folk Stories for fairy tales and science and and picture story tales for picture books.

And with a large diversity in sources, she can be exposed to different world views and we can avoid the awful sexist dehumanization of females rampant in Disney and other typical portrayals of women in contemporary popular culture. Our daughter will not have instilled in her from birth the idea that she is or should be a princess -- that girls/princesses must be physically attractive, and that they are passive creatures waiting for the sexual salvation of a male figure who values her only for her appearance and very often for her silent obedience. The solution is more fairy tales from more sources, especially those with origins in cultures we respect or trace our roots back to. This includes Celtic, Germanic, Latin American, Indigenous North American, and Japanese. We are particularly excited about the idea of intellectual and cultural diversity and providing her with a very broad worldview. And this keeps things exciting for us too, and gives us plenty of opportunities to grow the trove of stories from which we may draw, hopefully without boredom and with great imagination.

We are also pretty enthusiastic about poetry for a lot of these same literary and empathetic reasons, but we are probably doing okay with poetry for now. We have several shelves of poetry already, including many of the Shel Silverstein books. 

Non-fiction is also important. Since Sandi and I both have pretty deep backgrounds in and love for science, we want to make sure that from an early age she is able to see and explore the natural world. We figured that animals, dinosaurs, and general knowledge would be a good place to start and we found some wonderful books on these topics and have them on our wish list. Of course, these books contain much text and were designed for slightly older children, but the pictures in all of these books are sensational and are wonderful for even the youngest child to begin to explore and learn. And as she ages, she'll find more and more value in them and will hopefully prepare her for a life long passion for exploring and questioning the world around her.

As for actually reading to our infant and toddler daughter, we both love picture books. The picture books we love the most are all unique, and contain a depth and beauty that will hopefully grow with us and with her as we together explore the deeper depths and intricacies of the pictures. Our interest should make repetition less boring for us at least. They also will provide plenty of fodder for constructing together our own stories around the images. Such books will also be more accessible to an early or non-reader who won't be intimidated or thrown off by words when she doesn't want to be but can explore the book independently and at her own pace. There are two authors/illustrators in particular who have caught our eye, Arthur Geisert and Matsumasa Anno. Both are fantastically detailed illustrators and authors of such imagination that all of their books are delightful even to us as adults. They both also have many books that teach letters and numbers, but are educational without being patronizing or overly goofy. We also like the works of Alice Provensen, whose farm books are especially wonderfully and beautifully depict the pastoral landscape that Sandi at least grew up within her childhood.

Board books and other early books will also be necessary. Board books in particular are nice as Baby can play with them from a very early age without ripping pages or destroying them too badly, and have simple illustrations and words she can begin to grasp very soon. However, we do not have any particular preference or opinion about these.

And of course, used books would be most welcome. Any book will become 'used' very fast in our house anyway.

Perhaps you may think that we are over-thinking the topic of books for our daughter, but there is not much else to keep us occupied while we wait for her to arrive.