Six Children's Books That Respect the Children Reading Them

There is a version of children's publishing that talks down to children — big fonts, simple stakes, problems resolved in fourteen pages with a hug. None of the books on this list do that.

Jamie and the Forest's Challenge — B.M. Rae

Jamie lives in Founders Creek, which he has decided is the most boring town on earth. Then he bumps his head. Suddenly the owls are whispering secrets, the squirrels won't stop chattering, and the snakes — the snakes have opinions. The forest Jamie walked past every day without interest is, it turns out, having an entirely separate conversation. This book is about what happens when you learn to listen to things you previously tuned out. Children understand that lesson instinctively. Adults forget it.

Tabitha's Beautiful Web — B.M. Rae

Tabitha is a spider. She spins webs. But where other spiders see function — a trap, a home, a necessity — Tabitha sees something else: a masterpiece. This quiet, beautiful picture book is about the difference between seeing your work as utility and seeing it as expression. It is a book about creativity told through the most unlikely artist imaginable. Children who feel different about things they make will find something true here.

Wally's Big Adventure — B.M. Rae

Wally is small. The adventure is big. The courage required turns out to be entirely unrelated to Wally's size. For readers aged four to nine who are being told in various ways that they are not big enough, old enough, or ready enough — this book says otherwise.

Emmanuel and Sir Henry's Enchanted Adventure — B.M. Rae

Emmanuel has Sir Henry. Sir Henry is the kind of companion who makes the impossible seem navigable and the strange seem like home. This is a book for children who live richly in their own imagination — a book that validates the interior life as its own kind of real.

The Terrible Horrible Mr. Bones — Dr. Akua Agyeman

Some fears are invented. Some are real. Mr. Bones lives somewhere between those two territories, and this book helps children do what adults often cannot: figure out which is which. It is funny in the way that good scary things for children always are — the humor is not a retreat from the fear, it is how the fear gets processed.

Oh, The Amazing Things I Can Do — Dr. Akua Agyeman

Not a story. A declaration. This book belongs in every classroom and every home where a child is still in the process of deciding who they are and what they are capable of. Dr. Agyeman wrote it as a physician and a parent who understood that the earliest messages children receive about their own capacity are the ones that stick longest. This book plants the right ones.