100 books like A Child's Book of Art

At least in the US, once you become a new parent, people will invariably gift you this book, along with "Pat the Bunny", and a plastic giraffe toy. Why? Who knows. They just got all got really popular at some point and have remained so. For what it's worth, this is the most worthy of the three.

I’ve included it in this list mainly to call attention to just how profoundly bizarre it is. To some extent, because it's the second part of a 1940s trilogy set in a surreal universe of bunny people. I appreciate the eerie drawing style and palette throughout the series, but parts one and three are nothing special.

Although I can recall my indifference to this book as a kid, I'm a sucker for it now. Not sure if it's because of nostalgia, the way it taps into our collective unconscious or that scene from… show more.

This brilliant and surprisingly sophisticated book has a satisfying rhyming pace that breaks every other page, both visually and aurally, into a“Peek-a-Boo!” Tracing one day in the life of a baby boy in wartime London, it’s full of cues for parents to engage in questions and answers. For instance, the baby in the book goes to the park; the scene contains, inter alia, two perambulators, a double-decker bus, a picket fence, a zeppelin, a church spire, pink flowers, children fishing in a shallow pond, a policeman, boys with a toy boat, a gentleman carrying a walking stick and a rolled-up newspaper…. you get the idea.

This book was originally published in 1930 and also goes back a long way in my own life as well. I have fond memories of my father reading this story to me when I was young, acting out all the parts of the story, using different voices, and more. Despite being little and unassuming, the Little Blue Engine uses hope and belief to get over the mountain. Without belief in ourselves we often can’t even begin to try, but the Little Blue Engine chose to trust in himself and it paid off - big time. We can all use a little more belief in our own abilities to create massive change in our lives.

Try to get your hands on the original 1963 edition that made Richard Scarry‘s fortune and allowed him to move his family to Switzerland, for the skiing. It’s a fabulous book that’s crowded with scenes of purpose and industry, and with labeled pictures that bespeak the world’s exciting wideness. There are birds (the quail, pheasant, wren, bittern), buildings (a cathedral, pyramid, fort, skyscraper), flowers (clover, pansies, asters, foxgloves), and houses (the igloo, grass house, half-timbered house, chalet). Over time, subsequent editions were stripped of this eccentric specificity and of Scarry’s courtly depictions of traditional social roles (gone, for instance, are the “handsome pilot” and the “pretty stewardess”).

Neuroscientist György Buzsáki believes that focusing on human mental constructs (imagination, attention, instinct) gets in the way of seeing things from the brain’s perspective. Rather than being a blank slate waiting for experiences to etch new pictures onto it, the brain comes equipped with a huge reserve of built-in patterns, each one created by connected groups of neurons. In his view, memory formation is a game of matching those patterns with meaningful experiences so that your brain can better predict the future and the consequences of your actions. I walked away from this book with my brain very much changed. 

Of the dozens of books on neuroscience that I have in my library, I consider this one the most comprehensive and authoritative. I quote passages from it extensively in my own book. Its scope and richness qualify it as a primary text for neuroscience students. Buzsáki has enabled me to understand some of the most intricate structures and functions of the human brain.

Ramachandran is famous for studying some of the disorders that can be produced for the brain. One such is phantom limb pain. Some people who have had an arm amputated continue to feel that arm, and even to have pain in it. Ramachandran devised an ingenious experiment to try to abolish that feeling. This and other clever ideas are described in this book. Readers will quickly appreciate that science is like the humanities in requiring creativity.

This is an enlightening memoir recounting the story and journey of experiencing and recovering from a stroke. I love this book because it uniquely combines perspectives of the author being a researcher (neuroscientist), patient (experiencing the stroke), and just a common person with a normal life - which was turned upside down by the stroke. The author walks you through the arduous physical and emotional roller coaster of recovery, a few neurons at a time. The human brain candidly expressing what happened to itself, is a marvelously fascinating concept that you get to learn by reading this book.

A book written after decades of research by a leading neuroscientist to share his love of the brain with the general public. An ideal starter book for those of you who want to get a sense of all the different parts of the complex organ that comprise the human brain. In a series of chapters on the many different parts, regions structures, and brain processes this book provides a succinct yet comprehensive overview of the brain. It explains what the different parts do to make your brain work and how they work together they make us do what we do and makes sense of what we are.

Caroline Leaf is a brain scientist who has specialized in the science of thoughts for decades. She is also a Christian. In this book, she explains scientifically (though in layman's terms) how our thoughts affect our bodies, and even our genes (epigenetics). She shows how to utilize this knowledge to better our mental and physical health. I really believe this is an important book that should be read by almost everyone at some point in their lives. I see that she has a new book called 101 Ways to Be Less Stressed: Simple Self-Care Strategies to Boost Your Mind, Mood, and Mental Health which may be even more pertinent to the subject, though I haven’t yet read it.