New Section! Books for Parents!

We have been out of action for a while but we're back and better than before! In the next few months, we will be making a whole new slew of additions to My Imagination Kingdom. To start us off, here's our newly-created section specially dedicated to curating books that will help parents cultivate a reading habit with children. 

Here's a look at the books we've collected in this section:

1. 100 Best Books For Children by Anita Silvey (Paperback)

From classics to new favorites, 100 Best Books for Children “points parents in the right direction [to] 100 titles no child should miss” (Booklist). With thirty-five years of experience at the heart of children’s publishing, Anita Silvey is better equipped than anyone to help parents make the right reading choices, given the enormous range of children’s books available today. From board books to titles for older readers, Silvey narrows the field to 100 “best books,” organizing them by age and providing essays on plot summary, along with fascinating insights into the story behind the story that only an insider would know.

Essential and inspiring, 100 Best Books for Children is a perfect handbook for parents who want to help their child develop a passion for reading that will last a lifetime.

2. Baby Read-Aloud Basics by Caroline J. Blackmore (Paperback)

Decades of research have proven the value of reading aloud to children, and the years between birth and age two are arguably the most crucial for language development. As a parent, it's important that you help your baby acquire the foundation they need to speak earlier, read on their own sooner, and benefit from an increased vocabulary and attention span. "Baby Read-Aloud Basics" shows you how to establish an effective daily read-aloud routine to take charge of your baby's future understanding and success.

Organized around the six stages of early language development from birth to age two, the book provides simple but effective techniques to help you: make reading aloud an interactive experience - from intonation and speech patterns to gesture; select what to read aloud by looking at how much the text of the book repeats, whether it rhymes, and the types of interactive elements it incorporates; know when to read and how often in order to create a reading routine that's both enjoyable and effective; ensure your baby gets the right amount of language from a nanny or a caretaker; and effectively incorporate reading in a bilingual home. Filled with step-by-step instructions, scripted demonstrations, and a list of recommended titles, "Baby Read-Aloud Basics" gives you all the guidance and information you need to instill a lifelong love of reading and learning, and start your baby along on the road to success."

3. How To Get Your Child To Love Reading by Esme Raji Codell (Paperback)

Are children reading enough? Not according to most parents and teachers, who know that reading aloud with children fosters a lifelong love of books, ensures better standardized test scores, promotes greater success in school, and helps instill the values we most want to pass on.

Esmé Raji Codell--an inspiring children's literature specialist and an energetic teacher--has the solution. She's turned her years of experience with children, parents, librarians, and fellow educators into a great big indispensable volume designed to help parents get their kids excited about reading.

Here are hundreds of easy and inventive ideas, innovative projects, creative activities, and inspiring suggestions that have been shared, tried, and proven with children from birth through eighth grade.

This five-hundred-page volume is brimming with themes for superlative storytimes and book-based birthday parties, ideas for mad-scientist experiments and half-pint cooking adventures, stories for reluctant readers and book groups for boys, step-by-step instructions for book parades, book-related crafts, storytelling festivals, literature-based radio broadcasts, readers' theater, and more. There are book lists galore, with subject-driven reading recommendations for science, math, cooking, nature, adventure, music, weather, gardening, sports, mythology, poetry, history, biography, fiction, and fairy tales. Codell's creative thinking and infectious enthusiasm will empower even the busiest parents and children to include literature in their lives.

4. Reading Magic by Mem Fox (Paperback)

Best-selling children's author and internationally respected literacy expert Mem Fox reveals the incredible emotional and intellectual impact reading aloud to children has on their ability to learn to read. With passion and humor, Fox speaks of when, where, and why to read aloud and demonstrates how to read aloud to best effect and get the most out of a read-aloud session. She discusses the three secrets of reading, offers guidance on defining and choosing good books, and—for this new edition—includes two new chapters on boy readers and phonics, a foreword, and a list of "Twenty Books That Children Love." Filled with practical advice, activities, and inspiring true read-aloud miracles, this book is a turn-to classic for educators and parents.

5. The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books For Children by Eden Ross Lipson (Paperback)

The Classic Guide That Helps You Select the Books the Child You Know Will Love

In this third, fully revised and updated edition of The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children, the children's book editor of The New York Times Book Reviewpersonally selects and recommends books for children of every age. 

The most comprehensive and authoritative book of its kind has been completely updated for the new millennium. It contains hundreds of new entries, many expanded descriptions, and notations of additional companion and related titles -- more than l,700 in all. The best-loved classics of the twentieth century are included, as well as a thoughtful selection of outstanding titles from the last decade.

Six sections are organized according to reading level: Wordless, Picture, Story, Early Reading, Middle Reading, and Young Adult. In addition to a summary of the book, each entry provides the essential  bibliographic information you need to find a book in your local library or bookstore, including
        title
        author and/or illustrator
        hardcover and/or paperback publisher and publication year
        major awards
        related titles

The unique and most popular feature of the guide is its system of special indexes -- more than sixty in all. They make it easy for parents and grandparents, teachers and librarians, even children themselves, to match the right book to the right child. Browse through the indexes and find titles for every interest and mood: picture books about cats, mice, or dinosaurs for babies; funny books to read aloud to toddlers; series about family life or school or fantasy adventures for a middle-grade child; books on divorce or death; and coming-of-age novels just right for someone starting junior high school. There are also indexes for books about minorities and religion, an age-appropriate reading-level index, and much more.

Lavishly decorated with more than three hundred illustrations from representative titles, the guide also features extra-wide margins for notes on which of your children liked which book, at what age, and why. Thus the guide becomes a family reading record as well as an invaluable resource you'll use again and again.

6. The Read-Aloud Handbook: Sixth Edition by Jim Trelease (Paperback)