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Favorite Reads: Non-fiction series for toddlers

A few non-fiction series we’ve been enjoying in our home.

Written by Dana Meachen Rau, the Bookworms Tools We Use series covers a wide range of professions, from doctors and EMTs to artists, builders, and librarians. The photographs and short sentences held my daughter’s attention well, and she likes learning more about grown-up professions. These books would also be a good choice for a beginning reader.

Robin Nelson’s First Step Nonfiction books are great science books for a toddler or a beginning reader. Each page has a picture accompanied by a short sentence. Each book also has a few extra facts at the end of the book, where I learned a few science facts I didn’t know!

Acetate transparency pages grab children’s attention in the Scholastic First Discovery series. My family discovered these books while living in France, where they were brand new releases (by Gallimard jeunesse) nearly twenty years ago. The books fascinated me as a nine-year-old, although my parents purchased the books for one of my younger siblings. The target age range is 0-7 years for the French editions or 4-8 for the English editions. The books are identical as far as I can tell, so the age recommendations must be culturally-based. Both Johnny (16 months) and Emma (3) thoroughly enjoy looking at these books. I still have one of my family’s original French books, and I was thrilled to find English versions for sale in the US!

What non-fiction books do your children enjoy?

MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.

9 thoughts on “Favorite Reads: Non-fiction series for toddlers”

  1. The Robin Nelson books look really interesting, I’d like to get some of those for Sunnyboy. Perhaps I’ll learn some new science facts too!

    We have < HREF="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=John%20Schindel" REL="nofollow">Busy Penguins by John Schindel<> which Sunnyboy really enjoys and the other books in this series look good too.

  2. We have a Thanksgiving book all about growing pumpkins (can’t remember the name of it) that my daughters really enjoy. They like seeing all the photographs taken at various farms and seeing the different sized pumpkins.

  3. Andrea @ The Train To Crazy

    I love the Let’s Read and Find Science books. There are probably a hundred of them. Some are for kids who are a bit older but some are great for toddlers and preschoolers. We loved the From Butterfly To Caterpillar one.

  4. Hmm…we don’t have the “Cars and Trucks” book, and I haven’t noticed problems with the ones we do have (one about eggs, one about castles, and one about whales). It does sound like they could possibly use some more detail-oriented authors/illustrators/editors…

  5. Infant Bibliophile

    Our little guy loves the “Cars and Trucks” book in that Scholastic First Discovery series. But the more we read it, the more things we find that bug us in the English version. The people getting on and off the bus are backwards, for instance (it says they get on when they’re getting off and vice versa). And it says things like, “you must turn on your headlights, since the other cars will be turning theirs on!” But that’s not really why you turn on headlights. It drives my husband a bit nuts, but probably only because we’ve read it 100 times. :)

  6. We LOVE the “Let’s Read And Find Out” series of non fiction books, the level 1 books are great for 2 year olds.

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