Biblio: Let Caldecott Be Your Guide

Source: Brit + Co.

I'm going to be a bit bold here and state the obvious. There are plenty of fantastic books for children published every year. Unfortunately, a lot of them are garbage and/or plotless. In a world where many people are already trying to utilize the library more often and want to focus on teaching reading through a strong foundation of worthy materials, it pays to be selective about what books your introduce into your home. 


There's an almost outrageously obvious link between the number of books in a home and the reading grade level and amount of pleasure reading done by the children in that house. However, there's always an argument to be made for quality over quantity. As someone who's trying to reduce possessions, I purchase fewer than 5 books a year. 

I know that makes me sound really debatable at first glance, but I'm a massive library user. If I see a book I've been meaning to read for $1-$3 at the local Goodwill, I will probably grab it. Especially if I think it would make a good find for my relatives or if I know I'm going to want to reread it. So even if I'm buying, I'm generally buying used.

At the end of the day, for me to deem something worth owning it has to be an absolute rockstar because otherwise it just makes more sense to get it from the library on my Kindle. The Modern Mrs. Darcy has a great post about how she determines what is worth owning using a nice set of criteria. 

But when it comes to kids, it's common for parents who prefer e-books in their own collection to be strictly print focused. The NY Times has a great article with interviews with tech savvy parents who keep their kids strictly to paper books. The intimacy and tangibility of a paper book in hand, snuggled up on Mom or Dad's lap, is the perfect environment to nurture a young reader. 

As one father says: “I know I’m a Luddite on this, but there’s something very personal about a book and not one of one thousand files on an iPad, something that’s connected and emotional, something I grew up with and that I want them to grow up with,” he said.

So, now that we've established that you probably want paper books for your kids and so do most of the families you are gifting to, how do you decided what books are worth buying? Especially if you don't have kids of your own and aren't particularly familiar with the children's book market offerings. 

Well, cheat of course! One of the easiest markers of quality is a Caldecott annual winner or honor book. I like the way that little medal can tell me right at a glance that I book I don't recognize from my own childhood has value. 

A little history of the Caldecott taken straight from the Wikipedia article:

"The Randolph Caldecott Medal annually recognizes the preceding year's "most distinguished American picture book for children", beginning with 1937 publications. It is awarded to the illustrator by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). Beside the Caldecott Medal, the committee awards a variable number of citations to worthy runners-up, called the Caldecott Honors or Caldecott Honor Books. The "Honor" was introduced in 1971, but some runners-up had been identified annually and all those runners-up were retroactively named Caldecott Honor Books."

And some books that I've found at the local Goodwill to add to our collection:

 

A long list of all Caldecott winners from 1938-present is available here. 

They grabbed my eye immediately in the cluttered Goodwill shelves because of those medals and for 25 cents, after a quick browse, I was willing to grab them on the assumption that they would stand the test of time. I'm completely comfortable having a never ending pile of books coming in and out of our house from the library as my kids grow and start to make their own selections, so please don't think that I'm going to be some censorship weirdo. But, when it comes to keeping items of quality in my home that fit into the Charlotte Mason philosophy of avoiding twaddle, letting Caldecott be a major guide seems like a reasonable approach. 

If you're trying to decide what book to buy a child, those little markers can help ensure that you have a winner on your hands. I read an article about one grandmother who gives a first editions of the winner to each grandchild every Christmas to ensure a strong library collection but also because the books should retain their value over time. How do you decide what books to give to the children in your life? 

A book for each of the 25 nights of Christmas is a common tradition!