Picture books from my home library

We have a home library of a few hundred children's books. Here is a list of wonderful picture books that we have. All the following books have pictures on every page. The reading level refers to the Ladybird Peter and Jane series. For example, reading level 4 means that if the child is able to read Peter and Jane book 4 fluently, then he should be able to read the book, with a little help from parents.

Kids may be able to finish Peter and Jane level 12 before the age of 6, but parents should still make sure that they read as many picture books are possible. I have heard of kids who are able to read Roald Dahl books, as in they are able to pronounce the words, but they are not able to understand what they are reading.

I read the following in the internet :
No matter if they are reading above grade level when they are between the ages of 5-9, their books should always contain some pictures to help them develop their comprehension. He may be able to read at 5, but the development of visual perception probably isn't at the same level. Pictures will continue to help develop this very important skill. (Source)

My kids have read all these books and they really enjoyed reading the books. In fact, the following books are suitable for all ages. Parents will enjoy reading them too ! All the following books are available from the National Library. (http://www.nlb.gov.sg/) I bought almost all the books from www.amazon.com, many of these books are not available in local bookshops.

Title : The story of Ferdinand
Author : Munro Leaf
Reading level : 4
Amazon Review :
Ferdinand is a little bull who much prefers sitting quietly under a cork tree-- just smelling the flowers--to jumping around, snorting, and butting heads with other bulls. This cow is no coward--he simply has his pacifist priorities clear. As Ferdinand grows big and strong, his temperament remains mellow, until the day he meets with the wrong end of a bee. In a show of bovine irony, the one day Ferdinand is most definitely not sitting quietly under the cork tree (due to a frightful sting), is the selfsame day that five men come to choose the "biggest, fastest, roughest bull" for the bullfights in Madrid.
Ferdinand's day in the arena gives readers not only an education in the historical tradition of bullfighting, but also a lesson in nonviolent tranquility. Robert Lawson's black-and-white drawings are evocative and detailed, with especially sweet renditions of Ferdinand, the serene bull hero. The Story of Ferdinand closes with one of the happiest endings in the history of happy endings--readers of all ages will drift off to a peaceful sleep, dreaming of sweet-smelling flowers and contented cows.



Title : The Empty Pot
Author : Demi
Reading Level : 4
Amazon Review:
Ping is a Chinese boy with an emerald green thumb; he can make anything grow "as if by magic." One day the Emperor announces that he needs a successor, someone who can carry on after he is gone with the ruling of the kingdom and the growing of the flowers. He gives each child one seed, and the one who grows the best flower will take over after him. Competition is fierce, and Ping is heartbroken that nothing comes up, despite his careful tending. On the day of the competition, he is the only child with an empty pot; all the others brings lush plants. But the Emperor has tricked everyone by distributing cooked seeds, unable to grow; and Ping, with his empty pot, is the only honest gardener--and the winner. Extraordinarily delicate Oriental landscapes in round frames show Chinese architecture, foliage, native birds and clothing in a delightful way. And the story contains an important lesson on the worth of individual strength and honesty.


Title : The Giving Tree
Author : Shel Silverstein
Reading Level : 5
Amazon Review:
In Shel Silverstein's popular tale of few words and simple line drawings, a tree starts out as a leafy playground, shade provider, and apple bearer for a rambunctious little boy. Making the boy happy makes the tree happy, but with time it becomes more challenging for the generous tree to meet his needs. When he asks for money, she suggests that he sell her apples. When he asks for a house, she offers her branches for lumber. When the boy is old, too old and sad to play in the tree, he asks the tree for a boat. She suggests that he cut her down to a stump so he can craft a boat out of her trunk. He unthinkingly does it. At this point in the story, the double-page spread shows a pathetic solitary stump, poignantly cut down to the heart the boy once carved into the tree as a child that said "M.E. + T." "And then the tree was happy... but not really." When there's nothing left of her, the boy returns again as an old man, needing a quiet place to sit and rest. The stump offers up her services, and he sits on it. "And the tree was happy." While the message of this book is unclear (Take and take and take? Give and give and give? Complete self-sacrifice is good? Complete self-sacrifice is infinitely sad?), Silverstein has perhaps deliberately left the book open to interpretation.

My kids absolutely love this book !
Title : Lafcadio The Lion Who Shot Back
Author : Shel Silverstein
Reading Level : 10
Amazon Review :
First published in 1963, the late Shel Silverstein's children's book debut Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back, will resonate with young readers much as it did 40 years ago. The affable narrator Uncle Shelby's story begins: "Once there was a young lion and his name was--well, I don't really know what his name was because he lived in the jungle with a lot of other lions and if he did have a name it certainly wasn't a name like Joe or Ernie or anything like that." That all changes, however, when a circus man discovers the lion's skills as a marksman (the lion took a gun from a hunter he ate) and names him Lafcadio the Great. When the circus man takes Lafcadio to New York City, the story takes on a certain Crocodile Dundee quality--the lion eats the menu at a fancy restaurant, demands marshmallows (he likes the sound of them), and is captivated by the hotel elevator. As Lafcadio becomes more civilized and rich and famous, however, he becomes more unhappy. In the end, to entertain the increasingly despondent star, the circus man takes Lafcadio hunting in Africa where he encounters his old lion friends on the other end of his gun. Is Lafcadio now a man or is he a lion? He decides he is neither and wanders alone into the valley. In typical Silverstein style, this exuberantly-silly-yet-poignant fable, illustrated with simple, expressive line drawings, asks more questions than it answers. The glee the author derives from wordplay and the sound of language is positively contagious. This read-aloud classic belongs on every child's bookshelf.


Title : Love you Forever
Author : Robert Munsch
Reading Level : 6
Amazon Review :
The mother sings to her sleeping baby: "I'll love you forever / I'll love you for always / As long as I'm living / My baby you'll be." She still sings the same song when her baby has turned into a fractious 2-year-old, a slovenly 9-year-old, and then a raucous teen. So far so ordinary--but this is one persistent lady. When her son grows up and leaves home, she takes to driving across town with a ladder on the car roof, climbing through her grown son's window, and rocking the sleeping man in the same way. Then, inevitably, the day comes when she's too old and sick to hold him, and the roles are at last reversed. Each stage is illustrated by one of Sheila McGraw's comic and yet poignant pastels.


Title : The Paper Bag Princess
Author : Robert Munsch
Reading Level : 5
Amazon Review:
Elizabeth, a beautiful princess, lives in a castle and wears fancy clothes. Just when she is about to marry Prince Ronald, a dragon smashes her castle, burns her clothes with his fiery breath, and prince-naps her dear Ronald. Undaunted and presumably unclad, she dons a large paper bag and sets off to find the dragon and her cherished prince. Once she's tracked down the rascally reptile, she flatters him into performing all sorts of dragonly stunts that eventually exhaust him, allowing her to rescue Prince Ronald. But what does Prince Not-So-Charming say when he sees her? "You smell like ashes, your hair is all tangled and you are wearing a dirty old paper bag. Come back when you are dressed like a real princess." (At least he has the courtesy not to mention that the princess's crown resembles a dying sea anemone.) In any case, let's just say that Princess Elizabeth and Prince Ronald do not, under any circumstances, live happily ever after. Canadian author Robert Munsch celebrates feisty females everywhere with this popular favorite, and Michael Martchenko's scratchy, comical, pen-and-ink drawings capture the tongue-in-cheek quality of this read-aloud crowd pleaser.




Title : The Art Lesson
Author : Tomie dePaola
Reading Level : 5
Amazon Review:
This is a charming exercise in autobiography (one of several) by the great author-illustrator Tomie dePaola. "Tommy" is consumed with a passion for drawing. Although encouraged by his family, who treat his pictures with respect and decorate their houses and workplaces with them, he encounters misunderstanding and frustration at school. Finally, an art teacher gives him a chance to do his own thing. The Art Lesson is filled with many full-page illustrations in dePaola's inimitably warm, soothing style. It's also packed with the right lessons on individuality and perseverance, especially for children who are already showing a single-minded interest or special talents that put them ahead of their peers.


Title : The knight and the dragon
Author : Tomie dePaola
Reading Level : 4
Amazon Review:
What happens when a sheepish knight and a not-so-fierce dragon fight for the very first time? Well, it's no ordinary battle since the knight has to go to the castle library to learn about dragon-fighting and the dragon must dig through his ancestor's things to find out how to fight a knight! Spontaneity of line and feeling are backed by zesty colors and a jovial, tongue-in-cheek tone to which children can relate.

Title : The complete adventures of Curious George
Author : H.A. Rey
Reading Level : 5
Book Summary from Common Sense Media:
What happens when you take a curious monkey out of the jungle and set him loose in the big city? When the monkey is Curious George, the answer is chaos ... and a whole lot of fun! It's one adventure after another until he is arrives happily at the zoo.

Title : Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Author : Judi Barrett
Reading Level : 10
Amazon Review :
The tiny town of Chewandswallow was very much like any other tiny town except for its weather which came three times a day, at breakfast lunch and dinner.
But it never rained rain and it never snowed snow and it never blew just wind. It rained things like soup and juice. It snowed things like mashed potatoes. And sometimes the wind blew in storms of hamburgers.
Life for the townspeople was delicious until the weather took a turn for the worse. The food got larger and larger and so did the portions. Chewandswallow was plagued by damaging floods and storms of huge food. the town was a mess and the people feared for their lives.
Something had to be done, and in a hurry.


Title : The cat in the hat
Author : Dr. Suess
Reading Level : 4
Amazon Review:
He may be an old standby, but he never lets us down. When in doubt, turn to the story of the cat that transformed a dull, rainy afternoon into a magical and just-messy-enough adventure. There's another, hidden adventure, too: this book really will help children learn to read. With his simple and often single-vowel vocabulary, the good Doctor knew what he was doing: hear it, learn it, read it--laughing all the way. The Cat in the Hat is a must for any child's library.



Title : Green Eggs and Ham
Author : Dr. Suess
Reading Level : 4
Amazon Review:
Sam-I-am is as persistent as a telemarketer, changing as many variables as possible in the hopes of convincing the nameless skeptic that green eggs and ham are a delicacy to be savored. He tries every manner of presentation with this "nouveau cuisine"--in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, with a goat, on a boat--to no avail. Then finally, finally the doubter caves under the tremendous pressure exerted by the tireless Sam-I-am. And guess what? Well, you probably know what happens, but even after reading Green Eggs and Ham the thousandth time, the climactic realization that green eggs and ham are "so good, so good, you see" is still a rush. As usual, kids will love Dr. Seuss's wacky rhymes and whimsical illustrations--and this time, they might even be so moved as to finally take a taste of their broccoli.

Title : Percy Park Keeper : A classic treasury
Author : Nick Butterworth
Reading Level : 6
Amazon Review :
Percy the Park Keeper loves to spend time with his animal friends, and his work in the park keeps him very busy. Wherever Percy is, his animal friends are never far away. The animals often need Percy's help, and he is always there to lend a hand. Read about what happened when a chilly fox needed warming up, or when a dirty badger was offered a bath. Find out how Percy helped an unhappy hedgehog hold a balloon, or a squirrel find her lost acorns. And laugh along as the animals take charge when Percy isn't feeling well—with very surprising results! A treasure trove of endearing tales.
Note : This book is not available for sale anywhere. I borrowed this book from the library.


Title : Jenny Goes to Sea
Author : Esther Averill
Reading Level : 10
Amazon Review:
In Jenny Goes to Sea, Greenwich Village-based black cat Jenny Linsky travels around the world on the good ship Sea Queen with her master, Captain Tinker, and her adopted brothers, tiger cat Edward, and black-and-white cat, Checkers. Once on board, they meet the adventurous ship's cat, Jack Tar.
Leaving New York's harbor, they travel to Africa and Asia, and return through the Panama Canal. At each port they meet a colorful local cat who shows them around. Jenny and her pals have their fortunes told by an Abyssinian cat in Zanzibar, dance the sailor's hornpipe in Singapore with Bobo the Burmese, another ship's cat who was left behind, and float with Siamese cat Dara in a sampan boat on a Bangkok river on a most wonderful adventure.
Note : There are a few other books in this series



Title : Mercy Watson to the Rescue
Author : Kate DiCamillo
Reading Level : 5
Amazon Review :
Mercy Watson, a disarmingly charming pig adopted by a loving human family, makes her debut in this new series of chapter books for beginning readers. After the Watsons tuck Mercy into bed with a sweet song and a kiss, she feels warm inside, as if she has just eaten hot toast with a great deal of butter on it. However, afraid of the dark, she snuggles into bed with the couple. Moments later, all three are rudely awakened from their lovely dreams with a BOOM! as their bed falls into a hole that has opened in the floor beneath them. In hot pursuit of buttered toast, the porcine wonder inadvertently gets help and saves the day. Along the way, she causes great, humorous distress to the next-door Lincoln sisters. Van Dusen's bright gouache illustrations have a jovial exaggerated style and capture the sometimes frantic action and silliness of Mercy's heroic escapade.
Note : There are a few other books in this series


Title : The Cobble Street Cousins Series (6 books)
Author: Cynthia Rylant
Reading Level : 10
Amazon Review :
Nine-year-old cousins Lily, Rosie, and Tess are roommates in their aunt's home while their parents tour with a ballet company for a year. In A Little Shopping, the girls build a dollhouse replica of their aunt's flower shop to surprise her. In Aunt Lucy's Kitchen tells how the cousins decide to form a cookie company and meet a number of people in the community during their brief business adventure. Subplots involve playing cupid between their aunt and a customer and putting on a theatrical show for newfound friends. These titles fill the gap between easy readers and beginning chapter books. Halperin's soft pencil drawings scattered throughout add detail and just the right touch of fun to the stories. Sweet and refreshing, these books beg for a plate of freshly baked cookies and a comfortable reading chair.


Title : Flat Stanley, his original adventure !
Author : Jeff Brown
Reading Level : 7
Amazon Review :
Poor Stanley. He's a perfectly normal boy until one morning he wakes up flat. After his parents peel the incriminating bulletin board off of him, Stanley must adjust to life as a pancake. He is a boy who takes this kind of thing in stride, though, and soon he's enjoying the advantages of squashedness. Sliding under closed doors is fun, and it's gratifying to be of use to his mother when she drops her ring through a narrow metal grating. Expensive plane fare to California? No problem. Svelte Stanley folds comfortably into a brown paper envelope. There's even room left over in there for an egg-salad sandwich. But Stanley's true moment of glory comes when a gang of thieves begins stealing paintings from the Famous Museum of Art. The case seems hopeless--until our two-dimensional hero saves the day. Here is one boy who doesn't let his profile-challenged body stop him from living life fully--that is, until his brother finds a way to help him become well rounded again. Jeff Brown's matter-of-fact tone and Tomi Ungerer's witty and engaging drawings tickle the funny bone, making this 1964 classic a perennial favorite.

My boy loves this book very much ! This is not exactly a picture book, it is actually a chapter book. There is at least one full page of picture after every 2 to 3 pages of text. This is a wonderful book and must be read by all children.

Title : Three Tales of My Father's Dragon
Author : Ruth Stiles Gannett
Reading Level : 10
Amazon Review :
My Father's Dragon--a favorite of young readers since the 1940s and a Newbery honor book--captures the nonsensical logic of childhood in an amusingly deadpan fashion. The story begins when Elmer Elevator (the narrator's father as a boy) runs away with an old alley cat to rescue a flying baby dragon being exploited on a faraway island. With the help of two dozen pink lollipops, rubber bands, chewing gum, and a fine-toothed comb, Elmer disarms the fiercest of beasts on Wild Island. The quirky, comical adventure ends with a heroic denouement: the freeing of the dragon. Abundant black-and-white lithographs by Ruth Chrisman Gannett (the author's stepmother) add an evocative, lighthearted mood to an already enchanting story. Author Ruth Stiles Gannett's stand-alone sequel, Elmer and the Dragon, and her third volume, The Dragons of Blueland both received starred reviews in School Library Journal and are as fresh and original as her first.


Title : Dinosaur Trouble
Author : Dick King Smith
Reading Level : 10

Amazon Review :
Nosy, a newly hatched pterodactyl, emerges from his shell peppering his mother with questions. From her answers he quickly learns a number of big words about himself: nidifugous, pterodactyl, pulchritudinous, and nomenclature. And that’s just in the first four pages. His utter faith in his mother’s wisdom falters when he spies a young apatosaurus by the river, whom his mother dismisses as a second-class creature. (At the same time, the apatosaurus mother calls the pterodactyls much inferior to us.) Nosy seeks out the dino anyway, and the two eventually unite their families. Together they devise a plan to end the Tyrannosaurus rex’s reign of terror and have more success than anticipated. Much of the book’s humor relies on wordplay and the juxtaposition of the clever mothers next to their dim-witted husbands. Frequent black-and-white cartoon illustrations, both inset and full page, enliven the text and add a light comic tone. Complex vocabulary and sentence structure make this book a good fit for advanced young readers or as a read-aloud.



Title : Winnie-the-pooh
Author : A.A. Milne

Reading Level : 10
A wonderful classic that should be read by every child. This is technically a chapter book, not a picture book, but there are pictures on almost every page.

Other good books in my home library :
Title : The Poky Little Puppy
Author : Janette Sebring Lowrey
Reading Level : 5

Title : We're Going on a Bear Hunt
Author : Michael Rosen
Reading Level : 4

Title : The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear
Author : Don Wood
Reading Level : 4

Title : THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR
Author : Eric Carle
Reading Level : 4

Title : WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
Author : Maurice Sendak
Reading Level : 4

Title : Little Polar Bear (around 6 books in this series)
Author : Hans De Beer
Reading Level : 7

Title : Ottoline and the Yellow Cat, Ottoline goes to school
Author : Chris Riddell
Reading Level : 8

Title: Westlandia
Author : Paul Fleischman
Reading Level : 12

Title: The librarian who measured the earth
Author: Kathryn Lasky
Reading Level : 12

Sharing something that I read :
Researchers constantly find that reading to children is valuable in a variety of ways, not least of which are instilling a love of reading and improved reading skills. With better parent-child bonding from reading, your child will also be more emotionally secure and able to relate better to others. Intellectual performance will expand as well. Spending time together watching television fails as a substitute. (Source)