Do you remember Corduroy?
Notice the mother’s excellent posture? Children’s book illustrators used to draw such things with care.
That night, Corduroy has a little adventure.
I like the way the story unfolds with gentle illustrations to guide the way.
While Montessori classroom shelves use only non-fiction, I do have a few story books like these in the library corner. The fiction component is very small within a real story of a little girl’s desire to buy a teddy bear. With students, I talk about making up stories for fiction to help them understand how stories are made up by their authors.
The illustrations in a book are more important than many authors realize, so remember to check both the text and illustrations before you buy recent publications. My friend’s daughter likes tennis, so I wanted to buy a Venus and Serena Williams book, but there are no books with pretty illustrations of the two girls in any of the children’s stories. It feels as if a lot of the books were slammed together quickly during recent years without adequate quality control, hence my focus on older books for a serious children’s library.