The Ideal (Kid’s) Bookshelf

Ideal Bookshelf

Lovely Jane Mount asked me if I’d like to put together my and Ella’s favorite kid’s books for one of her Ideal Bookshelf Drawings. How could I say no to that? The print just went up for sale on 20×200. Check it out.

Jane’s statement from the 20×200 site:

For a while, I’ve been documenting people’s bookshelves as a form of portraiture; you can actually learn a lot about folks by their books’ covers. Now, I’m working on a series of “ideal” bookshelves: sets of favorites—mine or someone else’s—amalgamated in a picture, even if they don’t usually live on shelves anywhere near each other.

This set is Tina Roth Eisenberg’s favorite kid’s books. Tina is more often known as swissmiss, due to the popularity of her excellent blog and design studio. Tina documents all things well-designed and clever, and many things that “made her smile”, including lots of children’s products, since she is the mother of one and expecting another. As a longtime fan of her blog, I know she loves kid’s books as much as I do, so I asked her to pull her favorites from the shelves of her daughter Ella Joy.


The Books from left to right:

Papa Moll
You Can’t Go To School Naked!
Barbapapa
Dr. Seuss’s ABC (I Can Read It All By Myself Beginner Books)
Puzzlehead
A Fish Out of Water
Max und Moritz
Johnny Boo Book 1: The Best Little Ghost In The World
Flight of the Dodo
The Incredible Book-Eating Boy
Auf dem Lande.
The Big Book for Little Hands
365 Penguins
Giant Play and Learn Book (Activity)
This Is New York (This is . . .)
The Graphic Alphabet
The Way Back Home
Zen Shorts
Chowder
Follow the Line
Pippi Longstocking
Mr. Pine’s Purple House
Yummy Yucky
The Going-To-Bed Book
Good Night, Gorilla

13 Comments leave a comment below

  1. Long time lurker, first time commenter…

    No “The Dot”?

  2. Love to see Max und Moritz! I am one of few Canadians who ran into that book.. and my does it leave an impression!

  3. BarbaPapa !!!

  4. Oh TIna, missing some classics:
    – The Very Hungry Caterpillar
    – Where The Wild Things Are

  5. What a great idea! And it’s so true – you get to know someone very quickly by scanning their shelves.

  6. No Roald Dahl? Really?

  7. We LOOOOOOOOooooove Yummy Yucky at our house!

  8. incredible list – great stuff, but nothing in german?

  9. Glad to see Ali Mitgusch’s Auf dem Lande : his books occupy our kids for hours with all the little details in their drawings!

  10. ona swiss biased site i would have expected olden, but golden Globi to see on there… Glad to see Papa Moll made it up there.

  11. everybody needs a little Andy Warhol…
    Uncle Andy’s: A Faabbbulous Visit With Andy Warhol
    It is fabulous, especially for the very young!

  12. I am creating a web site at no cost for a non-profit children’s literacy organization. Can I use your illustration? I really like.