Sandra Boynton is a classic board book author, and there are good reasons why you see her books at baby showers and all over the baby sections of your favorite bookstore. While I enjoy reading her books, and my daughter does too, not all books are instant keepers. Here are seven books my daughter loves and might work for your next baby shower! I also included four books that maybe you should skip if you want to be the best book buying auntie!
Favorite Books:
- Jungle Night
If you are going to get one board book by Sandra Boynton, let it be this one! Our family has so much fun with this book. It is about a bunch of animals that are sleeping at night and the sound that they make as they go to sleep. As a parent, you get the opportunity to make each sound special for your child, which is why my daughter likes it so much. Her grandparents read the book to her as well, and each of us reads it differently. Because of that, she will take it around to all of the adults so that they can read it to her one at a time. In the book, one of the animals makes a very loud and funny sound, and my daughter loves that page. But we have managed as a family to make each page special. On the page where it states that the dazzling bird makes a long coo, I lean in close to my daughters ear and elongate the cooooooo part. She snuggles right up because she knows that I am going to whisper in her ear. My daughter reaches for this all the time. If she doesn’t like how you read a page though, watch out! She will just leave the room chattering up a storm and clearly looking upset. Those animals on the page are some close friends for sure! Please add this one to your baby shower gift basket. You won’t be disappointed.
- Doggies
This is a really simplistic book, but requires the parent to put on their best voices. The book goes through counting a series of dogs by the sound they make. Ironically as someone who used to dog sit, I can tell you that the little Dachshund dog in the book really does make that sound. You basically count the dogs by the number of sounds they make. Similar to the Jungle Night, there are two important pages to this book that makes my daughter run to get it off the shelf and into my hands. As a parent, take time to really exaggerate number 6 and 9. Your kid will love you for it. My daughter mimics how I read the book and follows along carefully waiting for 6 and 9 dogs to come up. I don’t think she loved the book the first time I read it until she heard number 9. Then we reread it, and she was so excited for that page. This is one of the things that Sandra Boynton does best in her writing. She gives parents the opportunity to really engage with the text and make it their own. When you do that, your child will love the book more.
- Belly Button Book
This one is fun for both adults and kids. My daughter was really obsessed (like many kids are) with her belly button and with bellies in general. She would walk up to family members and try to lift up their shirts to find their belly button. Not great at a family function or in a restaurant, but funny at home for us.. Luckily, I have a family who can laugh and go with the flow. This book has a great flow to it (as most Boynton books do). It also had great illustrations. My daughter loved the fact that there was a small hippo and a larger hippo. She really focused on what the little hippo was doing, which shows that Boynton really gets kids. My daughter now uses the same term as Boynton to describe her own belly button! This is great for baby showers because parents love to blow kisses on bellies and tickle their children. Reading this book gives a parent ample opportunity.
- But not the Hippopotamus
Something tells me that my daughter likes hippos. Or perhaps she just likes the illustrations that Sandra Boynton does with her hippos. This is the story of many animals going off to do amazing things while a hippo looks on hoping to be included. Spoiler alert, the animals do include him at the end! I found it to be really heartwarming. There doesn’t seem to be a reason why my daughter adores this book, but she does pull it off the shelf often. As a parent, it was nice to see that the animals didn’t forget the hippo. As a larger person, I always felt forgotten, so I feel like the character resonated with me as an adult. I think that most parents would be thrilled to get this in a baby book basket since it has a great message. It don’t have all the same gimmicks of Boynton, but it is touching and well worded.
- Hippos Go Berserk!
I don’t know if it is the counting, or that the Hippos are doing crazy things, or wearing funny clothes. My daughter loves to follow along on this book. There isn’t any special trick with this one, no funny voices, no special page. In this book, one hippo is feeling lonely so he throws a party, and hippos arrive and have a good time. Then all the hippos leave. It is a counting book, and my daughter has gotten really into numbers recently, so that may be why she enthusiastically grabs this book. It has great rhythm and rhyme to it, and I personally love the illustrations. It didn’t interest her as early as the other books on the list, but since she has turned two, this book has become a consistent favorite. I might save this book for when a child shows interest in counting verses giving it as a baby shower present.
- Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy!
My daughter is interactive, so she is a sucker for books that allow her to touch and play with. This book allows her to lift flaps, feel different textures, and has funny sayings. I found it very simplistic, but unlike other books that are very simple, this one still engages my daughter after two years of it being pulled off the shelf. I also liked that it provided a variety of textures. The turkey felt very different textually than other books that have attempted the same thing. If your child is focused on texture and interactive features, than this is the book to get.
- The Going to Bed Book
This book is all about a group of animals living together and trying to get ready for bed. This book actually helps with routines. I was reading this to my daughter and I realized that she was trying to follow what the animals did to get ready for bed. She loves to try and mimic this book and I got her to hang up her towel every night because of it. I think it works well for little babies who are just getting into a routine for bed time. I don’t know that I would put it into a baby shower basket, but maybe for a first birthday it would be a great option.
Books my daughter struggled with
Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with any of the books on this list. I will continue to read them to my daughter. My daughter is extremely active, and it is rare that a book can make her sit down and focus, so these books don’t have her focus YET. In a year, she might love these books. Each child is different, and honestly, not every child is interested in every book. I keep them out so when she does want to start looking at them, she can. She goes through phases, and I just have to have the books ready for her when she gets to this phase.
BarnYard Dance
This is a fun little story about all the animals getting together to dance. It has a really catchy rhythm, and fun pictures. I know that this tops most lists for #1 Boynton books, so you may be surprised that my daughter is completely uninterested in this book. For her, the catchy rhymes are not the only reasons to look at the books, and this just didn’t capture my very active daughter’s eye. She sometimes flips through it very fast, but she always prefers the book “Garraffis Can’t Dance” over this one, which is strange since she generally loves Sandra Boynton books. I don’t think that this is a bad buy for parents since I loved reading it, but you might want to wait to give it to them when they start moving. A toddler might want to mimic the barnyard dance which could help your child connect with the book (and who doesn’t love a good line dance in the living room!).
Are you a Cow?
I thought that my daughter would love this book! It is simplistic, there are opportunities for me to use funny voices and barn animals galore! There should be no reason not to like the book. Basically the book goes through a bunch of animal pictures and asks who the reader is. My daughter seems to find it really boring despite loving all other animal books it seems. She enjoys making moo and quack sounds, so I thought that this would be a perfect book and that I would read it fifty million times. Instead, I think I have tried it like ten times. At this point, it is on the shelf and she can pull it off if she wants, but so far, in the past six months, it hasn’t come off the shelf once. If you have a child who is focused on animals, this book might work for them but it did not engage my daughter.
15 animals
As an adult, I love this book. I keep trying to interest my daughter in it, but she doesn’t like it. I am hoping to bring it back when she is a little older because it is great. The book is about a little boy who owns fifteen animals and he introduces them to the reader by their names. It is repetitive as a parent to read, and once you have it read through once, the joke at the end is never as funny the second time around. However, I thought my daughter would get into the pictures of the animals, and the way my voice sounded as I read the names. Despite trying multiple voice changes, my daughter couldn’t care less about the names of the pets. I thought she would at least want to mimic the cat noises, but even that has no appeal. I guess it is back to the shelf to await the day she wants to hear the joke at the end.
Your Nose
The struggle that I have with this book is that I can’t sing, and this book kinda feels like you need to sing through it. It is definitely not a read this to me book. The reader is clearly expected to sing. There is even an audio version of the book. I wanted to like this since I am always kissing my daughter’s nose, but she flips through this book disinterested. For her, me waxing on poetically about how much I love her nose just has no value. Perhaps if I could sing, this would work.
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