Do you have a smush from a child who is somewhere in between eating books and listening to you read them? So you probably have three or six or twenty Sandra Boynton titles. Boynton, which has sold more than seven million copies to parents around the world, is the master of the board book. His hand-drawn animals range from goofy (oops!) to moody (a hippo, solo!), and have a magnetic appeal for toddlers and adults alike. my kids can easily memorize the story or chew on the rounded corners. I can see that each anthropomorphized animal, drawn with a seemingly shaky, perhaps unsteady hand, is just trying to get through the day. After reading several of his books about a thousand times, I have been able to rank Boynton’s best books for you here. (you may notice an absence of pookie the pig, and that’s because I find it disgusting).
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10. blue hat green hat
Different garments are different colors, but one garment is always the wrong color. however, where do the purple socks come from?
9. from a to z
simple, yes. the alphabet along with animals, with excellent use of alliteration. towards the end it’s about “ugly birds” and “vicuña” (which I have to look up every time to confirm that it’s a hoofed mammal that lives in western south america, like an alpaca), but as the books say alphabet, it’s well done.
8. opposites
In addition to being a completely charming book that lists opposites (big and small, short and tall), the rhyme is very enjoyable to read. Some of the joy in sandra boynton’s books is summed up in this particularly simple board book: while we teach the basics of ideas at the different ends of the high spectrum, or the right and wrong spectrum, we can also delight in the extent of the English. language, finding euphoria in the smallest and largest moments.
See Also: A World of Books: 9 English Tourism Books You Will Love | FluentU English
7. are you a cow?
a somewhat aggressive chicken tries to identify the reader of this boynton top ten title. a bit misleading, there is only one page that asks, ‘are you a cow?’, which is promptly answered, ‘no’. while the chicken continues to ask if the reader is dealing with specific animals, we are continually told no. in the end, though, we learn that it’s “you” and that’s great.
6. dinosaur dance!
can’t stop your toes from wiggling and your hips from bucking in response to rosemary clooney’s quasi-skat-jazz syncopated gibberish? So friend, I have good news for you :
zang! beat! childish pow! The dinosaur dance begins now!
5. barnyard dance!
yes, another dance book, but here’s the rub: the barnyard dance is an elaborate dance that requires multiple farm animals to interact with each other on their level. you don’t just dance with the horses, but do somersaults with them; some slide with the sheep, jump with the frog. it’s a wonderful metaphor for how we should relate on different levels, and it uses the word promenade as a verb.
4. but not the hippo
A variety of malicious and female animal cliques engage in aggressive, rhyming antics, ruthlessly excluding a poor desolate semi-aquatic ungulate. until, for no discernible reason other than a vapid whim, they finally deign to include it. which precipitates a moment of crisis. should it stay (and remain in dignified isolation) or should it go (and demote itself in the name of participation)? she is worn out, weak-willed. and then she walks away—and can you really say you’d do something different? but another must take her place, be pushed out, thrown away. the armadillo ha ha, stupid armadillo! brutal.
3. the bedtime book
The best analysis of this book is found in this new yorker article from 2015: tl;dr, the deranged chant of ritual is, in fact, a metaphor for childhood, for parenthood, and indeed for motherhood. life itself.
2. moo baa la la la
This is a great book for babies to start making animal noises.
1. hippos go crazy!
boynton’s last book, with the complexity of brecht. here, a hippopotamus in the depths of his isolation calls his friends to join him. more and more come, in increasing numerical order, some to play, some to work, so that when the house becomes overrun with hippos, they just go crazy. like some kind of bacchanal, they dance through the night of the hippo until the dawn of the hippo. then, in the crisp morning air, they set off in the groups they came in, heading east and west, in helicopters and horse-drawn carriages. the first hippopotamus is found alone once more. spoiler alert, “the other forty-four are missing.” fin!
See Also: 15 Strong picture books for grades 3-5 – The Measured Mom