9 Books in 10 Seconds

Suppose, just suppose, that you are at the library with a small child, picking books for said small child. Now, the small child could be tranquil, or could pick its own books, and in that case, you don't need my eccentric advice. Or, you could be desperate to pick out your books in the smallest amount of time possible.

Our solution for this is to have some go-to shelves, places where we know there are a high density of books we can grab and go without having to verify that nobody's head will explode when we read it a bedtime. If a library book enters my house, it will be read, by order of the miniature dictator. Yes, I can get around this, but it's traumatic.

Here are our choices. These are not necessarily our very favorite authors. For instance, we love Mo Willems. But our library has only 6 of his books, and they're hardly ever in, and he's next to Brian Wildsmith (beautiful pictures, but about half the books are too preachy or actively religious, which Paul can't stand) and a mixed lot of people named "Williams". So we get Mo Willems when we have a reasonable amount of time for looking, but skip him at light speed.

The early As: Right at the very beginning, Verna Aardema, Alan Ahlberg, Martha Alexander, and Aliki all come in quick succession. Alan Ahlberg doesn't always work for us, but the others are very reliable and Martha Alexander takes up most of a shelf.

Patricia Coombs: On the long side, but a sentimental favorite for Paul and Jason and Opal also loves them. We have now read all the ones our library has, a whole shelf full.

Lynley Dodd: Paul hates these, but when he's not home, Hairy McClary and friends are a consistent delight to the rest of us. Yes, they rhyme, all too bouncily, but they are fun little books with good words in them. And there are a lot of them.

Louise Fatio: There are a respectable number of these and they're terribly out of fashion, so they are never checked out. They're dated, but not in a bad way, and mostly set in France but don't have too much French. Plus most of them are about the Happy Lion and Opal loves lions.

Steven Kellogg: We actually have a compilation book with a lot of these and so had exhausted many of them before we started getting them out of the library, but they are plentiful and reliable in tone. Not my absolute favorites (there's something overly goofy about the pictures, and some of the plots get up my nose) but they won't do worse than make me itchy, every one has a Great Dane hidden in it, and Opal loves them.

Lester: Alison Lester, Helen Lester, and Julius Lester all come together. Alison Lester produces sweet Australian books with marvelous pictures and not very many words and diverse kids doing interesting (but often very Australian stuff). Helen Lester is very silly -- there's a whole series about Tacky the penguin. Julius Lester can be overly religious for us, so it takes a few extra seconds to pick, but his modern retellings of african-american traditional stories are hard to beat.

The early Ms: These are terribly spread out; really there are three grabs here. Margaret Mahy is very reliable. Robert McClosky is classic and quite good and very near Emily Arnold McCully who is all good, but there are wordless ones, short ones, and long ones, so you need to look at least enough to pick the kind that works for you. We like all the Susan Meddaughs.

Cynthia Rylant's easy readers: (these are shelved separately from the picture books in our library) The Mr. Putter books and all the Mudge books are big favorites with everybody in our house.

James Stevenson: I can't take them in large doses, and Paul has trouble with many of them even in small doses, but Opal loves these comic-style books with their overblown plots. And even if we got one a week it would take a long time to run out.

Rosemary Wells: