To start 2014, we’re excited to feature the best board books for babies of 2013 that we fell in love with. Because honestly, our babies fell in love with them too. And not just because the cardboard covers taste delicious. If there’s ever one New Year’s resolution we all want to keep, it’s “read more.” And we think that “read more to our kids” fits in there, too. When you’ve already got 16 copies of Goodnight Moon, we hope these picks help fill out your baby’s library beautifully.
Alphablock ABC book
Alphabet books have come a long way, baby. The Alphablock ABC book is like a work of art that will be treasure for many years (and siblings) to come.
Cozy Classics Board Books
These beautiful board books sure aren’t Pat the Bunny, but they are a clever way to condense erudite classics into twelve pages, each with a needle-felted illustration that brings the characters to life. Sweet? Not if you’re buying War and Peace or Les Miserables. But they’re the perfect gift for that librarian, professor, or hipster friend who rolls her eyes at Elmo.
Xavier Deneux TouchThinkLearn Books
Reinventing board books? Yep, it’s totally possible, thanks to the clever way the TouchThinkLearn series uses space, color, and texture to engage wee ones in a multi-sensory reading experience. With opposite pages that nestle together with positive and negative space and thematically-linked illustrations that are both simple and complex, we’re pretty wowed that a board book can do so much. And work as a chew toy, too, naturally.
Taro Gomi Board Books
You might know the work of Japanese illustrator Taro Gomi from his classic, Everybody Poops, but these books are much… sweeter. With lush but simple illustrations, you can count on interactive play and plenty of giggles as tiny fingers become cat tails and book pages become masks.
You Are My Baby
Mama Loves, Are You My Mommy?, and Is Your Mama a Llama? are classics, but we dig how these two You Are My Baby books from Petit Collage illustrator Lorena Siminovich leave the parents’ gender option wide open so families of all types can enjoy the interplay of parent-baby love.
So Many Stars
As much as we dig the Bugaboo stroller that matches it, this lovely little book of Andy Warhol images is far more affordable and sure to delight babies and children with never-before-seen illustrations from the artist himself, all from around 1958.
If your kids have moved beyond board books, don’t miss our round-up of the best kids’ books from 2013
