{"id":1066,"date":"2026-10-06T12:37:36","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T01:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/?p=1066"},"modified":"2026-11-02T10:03:32","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T23:03:32","slug":"picture-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/picture-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Picture books"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These are books that my young kids, and crucially, I, like. They are beautiful and great. Either funny or wise or strange or contain a unique little world or all of the above, and they are well-crafted and made for kids. By made for kids I mean the creators understand and respect children, and have taken something they care about and shared it in a personal way. As opposed to say making some trite formulaic junk about the power of friendship or recycling or going to sleep because they think kids are morons, or mindlessly button mashing the What Kids Like&#x2122; keypad (magic\/farts\/dinosaurs\/dogs\/unicorns\/princesses\/secret powers\/goo\/yelling\/etc), or making a lovingly designed wistful book for joyless self-involved grownups in the guise of a kids book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>First tier<\/em><br>Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel<br>Mouse Tales by Arnold Lobel<br>Umbra by Jordan Speer<br>Burglar Bill by Janet and Allan Ahlberg<br>Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg<br>Peepo by Janet and Allan Ahlberg<br>Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall and Barbara Cooney<br>Lily and Friends by Kevin Henkes<br>George and Martha by James Marshall<br>Little Mouse Helps Out by Riika Jantti<br><br><em>Second tier<\/em><br>Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak (but not the sequels)<br>The Rainbow Goblins by Ul de Rico<br>Pancakes for Findus by Sven Nordquist<br>Need a House? Call Ms. Mouse by George Mendoza and Doris Susan Smith<br>Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry<br>The Story of the Root Children by Sibylle von Olfers<br>The Tomten by Astrid Lindgren<br>Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem<br>The Little Island by Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard<br>Zoom by Istvan Banyai<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These are books that my young kids, and crucially, I, like. They are beautiful and great. Either funny or wise or strange or contain a unique little world or all of the above, and they are well-crafted and made for kids. By made for kids I mean the creators understand and respect children, and have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1066"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1100,"href":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1066\/revisions\/1100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/julianfrost.co.nz\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}