The Best Kids' Books

NYT op-edder Nicholas Kristoff shared his list of The Best Kids' Books ever in a recent column, citing the importance of school-age children reading during the summer months. He claims that he recently came across the fact that kids actually shed a couple of points of IQ during the long vacation from school. He doesn't specifically cite the relevant study, but what a hook for a column! Okay, I'm scared! I'm interested! I'll read the rest of the column already! Check out his recommendations here, with a follow-up blog post here.

Having a young child about the house has encouraged me to keep awesome juvenile fiction around (as well as classic science fiction, in the hopes of raising a fellow sci-fi fan). Libraries are a very important (and free) source for reading material, but I think it's also a good idea to have some of your own material on hand. The more readily available great books are, the more likely your kid will reach for them when she's "boooooored" this summer. Books need not be expensive, there are a lot of second-hand sources. The library near where I work has a second-hand book store inside where kid's fiction paperbacks are a quarter. My amazing finds so far include A Wrinkle in Time and a couple of the old Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators mysteries.