Books for 1-year old?

Hi everyone,

I am looking for a book for a friend's little girl, who is having her first birthday next month. I have no children, so I am not familiar with books for that age group. Any suggestions? I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks,

k4k

Anything by Eric Carle. The Very Hungy Caterpillar is alway a favorite. Get the board book style, they hold up better. Another idea might be a cloth book that teaches little fingers how to button, use a zipper, ect... Or just go to the children's section of the bookstore and browse.

Any of Sandra Boynton's board books would be good but her book Fuzzy, Fuzzy, Fuzzy would be particularly good. It's a large board book with minimal text and a bold picture of an animal on each page and each animal has a textured body part - for instance the Turkey's wattle is hard and bumpy.
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? by Bill Martin (and Eric Carle) is another another good one.

One-year old generally are not very good at following stories, so the stories are for the adult reading the books to the kids really.

Colors. Big emotions. Touch panels. Rhyme. Sound effects (made by the reading adult - the kids will love books with battery-powered sounds but their parents will not).

Personally I like Miffy books, or Goodnight moon for kids that age. And I second Brown Bear.

And, as was said before - get the board book version, they have to be sturdy.

Thanks, everyone! I am pretty sure she has The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but I will look at the others. k4k

My kid *loves* Whose Toes Are Those? and Whose Knees Are These? by Jabari Asim. Perfect combination of a little mystery, and questions, and rhyming. And unlike Eric Carle or Sandra Boynton (who my kid also loves) you are much less likely to accidentally duplicate something they already have.

I agree about board books, and about simple and rhyming. Some old favorites in my house:

The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss
Fuzzy Yellow Ducklings by Matthew Van Fleet
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are, too, but they're more likely to have it.)
The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood
Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann
Jamberry by Bruce Degen
I Went Walking by Sue Williams

Lift-the-flap books, touch-and-feel books are winners, because it gives the child a way to interact with the book. I like the Spot the Dog books, by Eric Hill, or the That's Not My ... series, for example; but there are loads - with colours, or tractors, or animals, or shapes...

Ten Little Babies by Gyo Fujikawa

The perfect board book for age 1-2!

No, David was the first book my son loved, startng around 9 months. Even if he didn't follow the story, he understand "no" and would get very excited about shaking his head every time I said the word "no." The drawings also really caught his attention. If I tried to put the book away after only one or two reads, he'd scream.

Right around one, he really took a liking to The Mommy Book and The Daddy Book. Todd Parr does great stuff for capturing little folks' attention!

Seconding Wester, Goodnight Moon is also much beloved by my son. :)