Books for Younger Kids -- Back-to-School

Disclosure: I was sent these products free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As always I am providing links to the book for your convenience.

As we continue our back to school week I thought we would look at some books for our younger kids. The first book is perfect for toddlers and beginning readers. It is a fun board book. It is City Block by Christopher Franceschelli and art by Peskimo. 

This fun board book has all sorts of interesting pages with cuts and cut-outs. It goes through some of the things about visiting a city. It answers three questions with various answers: How to get around the city?

What to do in the city?

and What to eat.

I love the interesting shapes of the pages and cut-outs and that the people are multicultural as well as the food. It is a fun book that has pages that open up and more. It is so much fun to explore a city with this kind of book!!

Our next book is Monsters Go Night-Night by Aaron Zenz. It takes a look at how a monster goes to bed and compares how it is different than a child. It will ask questions and give choices and then show the correct answer which is always the craziest choice or at least almost always. 

 This fun, silly book will have any young child (and older ones) laughing at bedtime. And of course it does show the monster actually going to sleep. The monster's bedtime routine mirrors the common child's bedtime routine with funny twists like bathing in chocolate pudding. It is definitely a fun one!!

 Our next book is an easy reader chapter book. The book is Rabbit & Robot & Ribbit by Cece Bell. This book is being released next week on the thirteenth. It tells the story of friendship and jealousy. Rabbit decides to surprise his friend, Robot by visiting. However Rabbit gets the surprise to see Robot playing checkers with a frog named Ribbit. What is worse is Rabbit cannot understand frog so all he hears is "Ribbit" when Robot hears full sentences and jokes. However when something happens to Robot his two friends find a way to get along and work together to save him and after that they become friends as well. It is a wonderful tale of different social situations that young children may find hard to navigate. Plus it is an easy read for the beginning reader.

Source

 It is very entertaining and children will enjoy the humor as well as the message of meeting and making new friends of friends and getting along.

Our final book is a beautiful picture book.  It is Toby by Hazel Mitchell. Of course Hazel was very excited to see a Hazel wrote the book. This would be the perfect book for National Dog Day but I missed it. Sorry!! It tells the tale of a boy who asks his father to get a dog as they are unpacking in a new house. They head to the animal shelter and the boy wants Toby (the dad was thinking the big yellow one). The first day Toby has a hard time adjusting and has an accident. The boy decides to train Toby. Eventually he has Toby doing tricks and then the boy leaves for school and well Toby gets into some trouble. They however discover that Toby is great at finding lost shoes. It is truly a wonderful story of the struggles of bringing home a new dog and the amazing relationship between the boy and the dog. It is truly amazing how we love our pets so instantly and they seem to love us back. 

 Mitchell shares that Toby is based on a real-life Toby that her family adopted (after fostering him). He also made news on social media when he went missing. (Source) This story really is about the feelings in a new situation and taking the time to work through it. It has so many great life lessons for kids in it. I hope you will check it out!!

So these are four suggestions for your younger children. We really enjoyed all of them and hope you will check them out!!