Favorite Picture Books

Books are a bit of an obsessions for me, so when Lindsey over at The Teacher Wife started the Favorite Picture Books linky, of course I had to join in! There are way too many books I love to list them all, but these are my top three:

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg, is probably one of my all time favorite picture books. Its the story of a man who is trying to publish his writing, and so he leaves one illustration from each story with a caption and title in a box with a children's book publisher. He intends to return to the publisher's office, but he mysteriously never does. The book is essentially the author's note and 14 full page illustrations that are unrelated to each other. Kids LOVE it and its a great way to inspire story writing. I have it in portfolio edition, so as I read it I can hang the posters around the room. There are also tons of resources on line and even websites where kids can submit the Burdick stories and read those of others. Here's a Vimeo I found just now. I have no clue how he animated those pictures!

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick from Daniel Savage on Vimeo.

Weslandia, by Paul Fleischman, is the story of a boy who doesn't fit in, but refuses to conform to his neighborhood's view of "normal." For a summer project he begins growing a crop, but eventually ends up creating his own civilization using parts of the plant he grows, complete with a written language and special numbering system. By the end of the story, Wesley himself is the trend setter. Here's a TeacherTube video I found with someone reading the book aloud if you're interested:

Free Fall, David Weisner...well, anything by David Weisner, is simply amazing. He writes wordless picture books and I love, love, love to share them with my kids! The illustrations are so detailed and there's just a sense of wonderment that his books inspire. I also found this book on YouTube:

Well, I didn't start out looking for videos to go with each book, they just popped up on my search engine when I was looking for the amazon links. I think it is so cool though that there are extensions like these available. 

Want to see more? Hop on over to the linky:

How about you? What are your favorites?