#1: Don’t worry too much about what to read to your kids, but read to them! And once they can read, make sure they never run out of books. Libraries are wonderful places.
I started to make a list here and then decided that I probably can't do much better than these folks (though I'm tempted to make it into something a little easier to take to the library and tick off as you go...)
The list above for young readers, created in 2020, is a supplemental list to their backseat reads list focused on older kids 9-14, created in 2013:
And here is a list of npr readers’ favorite books for teens, by popular vote: in 2012:
While I’ll defer to these lists, I will add the book I gift the most: A Child's First Book of Poems
— it’s a collection of poetry by different authors and has wonderful illustrations (by Cyndy Szekeres), which I think was important for me in interfacing my young mind with the magic of poetry in a really positive way.
It was originally published in 1981 and is out-of-print, so I buy it used; for whatever reason, there are two separate listings on Amazon:
This website is where a friend chooses books for reading aloud:
