Books for New Mamas and Babies

I’m the crazy book lady.  If you have a baby shower or a new baby born or a birthday party for a child of any age, or if I need to get a gift for a kid of any age for Christmas or Easter, you can be nearly certain that you will get books.  Sometimes I even just go buy random books to donate to kids who don’t have any at home.  It’s just what I do.  For one, it’s hard to know what people have and what people need, and you can’t really go wrong with books.  Plus, I’ve evangelized for reading aloud to children enough in the last three months blogging that I don’t think I really need to go into again.

But out of all of these occasions that I buy children’s books, my absolute favorite is for new babies and their mamas.  See, when a baby is really young (experts say under four months) it really doesn’t matter at all what you read to them.  When Magoo was young, I read her Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason.  (Between you and me, I think she liked it better than I did.)  And so when you are buying books for new babies, you can be as corny and cheesy as you want, and you don’t have to worry about things like rhyme, vocabulary, and bright, colorful illustrations.  You can focus on books that will be meaningful to the new, hormonally charged mother.

And so today, I figured I would share with you my three favorite books for new babies and their mothers.

1.  You are My I Love You by Maryann Cusimano.  Truth be told, this is the first children’s book I absolutely fell in love with, and I didn’t discover it until Magoo was about 18 months old.  At our local library, they have bags with themed books, and there was a lovey-dovey one, and it had this book in it.  I cried the first time I read it.  And the second.  And the fiftieth.  This book gets me nearly every time.  The overriding theme of the book is that to children, parents are their safety net, the place they call home, and their comfort, while to parents, children are their risks and their new worlds.  The rhymes are breathtaking and heartbreaking and about as true as I have ever read.  The trick about this book is timing though.  An 18 month old won’t like it because the drawings are all in pastel and aren’t all that exciting.  My twelve month old won’t give it the time of day.  You need to read it before they are interested in those kinds of things.  My three year old will let me read it to her whenever I want to, but I don’t think she has ever picked it out.  I think she knows how much I love it.

Favorite Line: “I am your finish line, you are my race; I am your praying hands, you are my saying grace”

2.  On the Night You Were Born by Nancy Tillman.  I actually didn’t discover this book until after the Goose was born.  It was actually a birth present that we were given.  And this one, too, brought instant tears.  This one talks about how the whole world rejoices for the birth of your little baby, and it ends by telling your little one that certain things that occur in nature happen because that is the world rejoicing in her or him.  Like the above book, the illustrations won’t quite appeal to the toddler set, but they are a bit more exciting and diverse that in Cusimano’s book.  My three year old will occasionally request this book, and again, she will let me read it to her whenever I chose it.  I read it all the time to the Goose when she was a baby, but now she’s more interested in Elmo.  I do think, however, that the calm, lilting cadence was calming to her when she was quite young.  One thing is for certain, when I have another baby, I’m bringing this book to the hospital because I can only imagine how special it would be to read the beautiful verses to my baby during that special first hour of his or her life.  Yea, I’m a cornball.

Favorite Line: “Heaven blew every trumpet And played every horn On the wonderful, marvelous Night you were born.”

3.  Someday by Alison McGhee  This is actually the only book on the list that I had when Magoo was a baby.  I went to Target one day to pick up diapers, and I stopped by the book section as I always do.  I was having a really rough day and well, let’s just say I was very emotional for many months after she was born.  I happened to pick up this book, and I was hooked.  This one is all about the things you wish for your children as they grow up, but there is the obvious hint of melancholy as the author (and mommy reader) know that each of these steps towards independence are exciting and important and very beneficial, but they are also steps away from home and mommy and daddy.  If I’m feeling emotional, this is still one of the first books I go to.  Unfortunately, neither of the girls likes this one that much (again, the drawings are very pastel and quite boring for little eyes,) and so this one is definitely for the mother of a brand new baby who might need something to do while she’s up nights feeding an insatiable baby to remind her that this is just but a season of her life.

Favorite line: “”Someday, a long time from now, your own hair will glow silver in the sun. And when that day comes, love, you will remember me”

So those are my three books that I try to get for new moms.  Oftentimes, I will go overboard and will get more than this, and I have a whole slew of other ones I like (particularly Snuggle Puppy, Love You Forever, and Runaway Bunny), but these ones are particularly tailored to that short spell in life when your baby is just putty in your arms and you can sit down and read love stories to him or her.  (When you aren’t changing diapers, calming crying, crying yourself, feeding, doing laundry, washing dishes…  You get the idea.)