Best children books for 2-4 years old.

Three more books to shape reading habit in the year 2011:

Excerpt from The Guardian.co.uk , Tuesday, 11 May 2010 online resource:

The Goodnight Moon: Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd

A pyjama'd rabbit tries to delay lights-out by bidding goodnight to everything in his room. The story unspools in soft, sleepy half-rhymes: "a little toy house and a young mouse"; "a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush". A bedtime classic (brace yourself for the inevitable "what's mush?").

The Elephant and the Bad Baby: Elfrida Vipont and Raymond Briggs

A larcenous elephant and his diminutive passenger gambol down a high street, merrily shoplifting as they go, and collect a train of fist-waving vendors in their wake. Briggs' airy illustrations perfectly balance the clatter of the pair as they go "rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta, all down the road".

The Snail and the Whale: Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

Forget the Gruffalo. The finest book to emerge from the pens of Team Donaldson-Scheffler is this rich, rewarding tale of a snail with wanderlust and the whale who takes her on a round-the-world cruise. Size isn't everything, the message goes: when the whale is beached, the tiny snail saves the day.

to be continued...