I first heard about Amy Krouse Rosenthal when my dear friend Courtney sent me a copy of Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, which I immediately fell in love with. I did some research on the author and learned that she also writes children’s books and does cool projects like The Beckoning of Lovely.
Anyway, back to now. A few weeks ago, I popped into Essenza (with my dear friend Barbara), and took a look at their (mostly overpriced) alcove of stuff for kids. I found these adorable little board books that I started flipping through, then noticed that they were written by AKR. Cool! I ended up buying Little Oink, the story of a pig who hates making a mess, but decided to wait on Little Pea (a pea who hates to eat candy but has to do it if he wants his vegetable dessert) and Little Hoot (the owl who hates to stay up late). A couple of weeks later, I decided to buy the rest of the books on Amazon. Shame on you, Essenza. Nice trick you pulled of breaking up the set of board books so you could charge your customers more for them. They’re only sold in a set! And you overcharge for Sophie the Giraffe too. Bitches.
The Little Books are adorable. The stories are cute and fun, and I love the illustrations. Another great children’s book by AKR is Spoon. It’s about an adorable little spoon who learns to appreciate his own gifts rather than envying the specialness of his friends knife, fork, and chopsticks.
I enjoyed kids’ books before I had my own little munchkin to read them to, but now it’s even more fun to discover these gems.