I am not buying a wipe-warmer: you do not need that. Books, you need.

Today you lovely people get to benefit from my

1) need to provide the newest arrivals in my family with quality children’s literature,
2) hatred for gift registries, and
3) understanding of the panic that occurs when tiny babies do not want to go to sleep.

My go-to gift for any occasion is a book. Or many books. I figure you, my fellow Cannonballers, have a similar notion that there is, somewhere in the universe, a perfect book to give as a gift for almost every reason. Good days, bad days, promotions, losses, stubbed toes, missing you moments: Books are good for them all. Not cure-alls, mind you, but just to show you care, to let the person know you’re thinking of them, whatever the reason may be. And for actual gift giving days – birthdays, parties, Christmases and the like? Books should be your first response.

So for my cousin’s upcoming baby shower, I gave the registry a brief glimpse – too much pink, too little I could actually afford – and happened to see that they’d requested the Johnson & Johnson’s bath wash that’s specifically for bedtime (in that it contains “soothing lavender essence”), and I figured I could work with that. So I put together a little care package of the baby wash, an adorable puppy softie (that is seriously so soft I want to keep it, but won’t), and some appropriately soothing bedtime books to add to the new kiddo’s routine.

I started with a couple of classics, which I am not going to bother reviewing: if you don’t know about the awesome that is Goodnight Moon, I’m not sure why you’re bothering to read this review at all. Other five-star favorites I included were Sandra Boynton’s The Going to Bed Book; Ten, Night, Eight by Molly Bang; and Good Night Gorilla, by Peggy Rathman.  (All of these books are in board book form unless I mentioned otherwise, because gnawing on books should just be a given until a kid turns two-ish.)

Next up is Time for Bed, written by Mem Fox & illustrated by Jane Dyer, which came out in 1993, and I consider a staple of bedtime books, but the lady at the bookstore hadn’t heard of it (gasp!), so I figure maybe I should extol on its virtues a bit here for those who’ve missed out.  The short, repetitive & rhyming text (“It’s time for bed little goose(animal), little goose(animal); the stars are out and on the loose (rhyme)”) are sweet, cozy and charming. The pictures are water-colored & dreamy, and easily recognizable for older kids, and – while it doesn’t have any of the little comic surprises of a Good Night, Gorilla or The Going to Bed Book – the simple, soothing pattern is one that kids tend to memorize quickly and learn to help you ‘read’ early on.

The last three books I chose were new to me:

The first, If Animals Kissed Good Night, by Ann Whitford Paul, with entertaining illustrations by David Walker, drew me in because of the adorable elephants on the cover, and works as a good companion to Time for Bed, as it goes through different animals and their progeny (bear and a cub, seal and a calf, parrot and chick, etc.) and how they might say good night. It’s more Suessian & playful – with its “splashity-splishes” and “mud-happy heaps”, but no less soothing or snuggly.

Hush Little Polar Bear, by Jeff Mack, is about the adventures a sleeping stuffed polar bear – and his
little girl – might get into in their dreams.  All the “bouncing through pastures” and “creeping through caves” are lovingly drawn and the fuzzy bear somehow manages to safely navigate his way back to imagining that he’s safe and sound with the little girl, all tucked into bed, book laid out on top of the sheets.  It’s cute, and it’s a little bit different from the others in that it’s neither a book about a specific routine (10,9,8 or Goodnight Moon, i.e.) or a book about imagined routines (all the rest). Dreams and adventures definitely need to have some space in the bedtime book line-up. (It’s more along the lines of a Harold and the Purple Crayon.)

Last – and the only non-board book, because I don’t think there is one – is Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site, by Sherri Duskey Rinker and Tom Lichtenheld. I bought it specifically because my cousin is an architect and works at construction sites a lot, so his little girl should know about them, eventually. The book goes through all different pieces of equipment and what they do – crane truck, cement mixer, dump truck, etc – and then has them slowly ending their day and going to sleep, with a gentle rhyme & and a brightly colored illustration – “He lowers his bed, locks his gate; Rests his wheels; it’s getting late. He dims his lights, then shuts his doors, and soon his engine slows to snores. Shh… goodnight, Dump Truck, goodnight.”

There you have it: Baby’s first bedtime books, which stop here only because I ran out of money. (Given a bit more funding I would also include: Roar of a Snore; The Napping House; Steam Train, Dream Train; Moon Dreams ; Llama, llama Red Pajama; The Dream Jar; I Love You, Stinky Face)