children’s book series

One of my new year’s resolutions was to read a book to each child before bed each night. We were okay at this before—maybe 75% of the time. But I really want to work at making it constant.

I am guilty of choosing shorter (but still good!) books for my almost 4 year old, and I think he is really ready to move on to longer stories.

We have done a few this past week that take me a good 20-30 minutes to read and I am thinking WOW this is quite a book. But then I imagine how calming that must be to lay there in bed and end the day relaxing and listing to a nice long bedtime story and I am happy I’m doing it.

I hope to instill a love of reading in the boys and I don’t want to let a busy night lead to the bedtime story falling by the wayside.

Today I am going to recommend a shorter board book that my 2 year old loves. He gets such a kick out of it, it was a clear first choice for my children’s book series.

The book is Cowboy Small by Lois Lenski and it’s pretty simple. It does not rhyme or contain more than one or two short sentences per page. But something about it makes Tom’s face light up.

Of course this could simply be due to the fact that he is a die hard cowboy fanatic. We’ve only read it 10 times in the last few days after all. See below he is “roping” with that wild arm.

Unlike a lot of kid’s books we read, Cowboy Small isn’t really there to teach a lesson on sharing or washing hands and there isn’t much by way of a moral to the story.

Cowboy Small does fall off a horse and get back up on another one, which is nice and we have discussed why he’d try again.

I think the stand out is the illustrations. The book has a vintage feel with bright illustrations in what looks like an older hue.

When I looked up when the book was written, and Amazon said 2001. However, it’s actually a new edition since the author lived from 1893-1974. It was written in 1949. There is a series of “Small” books including Papa Small and Policeman Small that we will probably try out soon.

I would recommend this to any little cowboy or cowgirl in your life. Great as a gift and inexpensive enough to buy just because!

That’s all for this little children’s book series. I am going to do a quick recommendation each month to keep me on track with our bedtime stories, offer recommendations to my readers, and have a written record of what my kids were loving at any given time in 2019.