100 books like Eyes That Kiss in the Corners

While baby-led weaning can be a little out of the ordinary and is definitely not right for every child, this book is an interesting read for a new parent. Coming from an early childhood background in education, I was fascinated by the prospect of my child being able to essentially play with her food while activating her five senses and honing her fine motor skills all at the same time. The book helped me to understand how to slowly introduce new foods while babies naturally wean off of milk. Best of all, as a family, we ate healthier as a result!

Let’s face it, Baby-led Weaning is not for everyone, but just think of the freedom that you could be potentially providing since your friend could be completely avoiding spoon-feeding and purchasing canned baby food.

I read this book to my son when he was a baby every single night for over a key, and it still gives me goosebumps.

Personally, the road to becoming a parent hadn’t been straightforward, and this celebration of a new life in the world put my feelings about the wonder of this into words. A key part of building self-worth and self-esteem in children is creating a sense of awe and wonder, and this book does that alongside helping each child to see how special and unique they are.

It’s relevant for any of us at any age to remind us that we all have immense value.

The Good Sleeper was recommended to me by a mom in my neighborhood who instantly noticed that I was struggling with my new role. While my daughter was keeping me up most of the night, her baby was actually sleeping for sustained periods of time in his crib. Sure enough, after reading this book, I was finally able to understand the science behind what was happening with my baby and how I could best meet her needs. I read and reread each chapter as I tried the strategies until I found the right ones for my child. It’s no exaggeration to say that getting sleep changed my world! Pass this book along and give a new parent the gift of sleep.

I know, I know  – potty training might seem a long time off, but before your expecting friend knows it, the need to begin potty training will be upon them, and trust me it is not for the faint of heart. What better way to face potty training than to laugh through each chapter of this hilarious, brilliant book? With the six-step process shared in the book, we were easily able to get our daughter ready for daycare in plenty of time. So tell your friend to set it aside and believe me they will thank you later.

I love Kate Manne’s writing. In many ways, her first book, Down Girl, impacted me more, but it was published by an academic press. And my (totally made up, but I’m sticking to them!) rules for this list is that the books must be published with a trade press, so they genuinely intend to do philosophy with everyone.

This is Manne’s second trade book, but it is the work of hers that I found most immediately gripping, personal, and a bit haunting. As someone who has struggled with body image throughout my life and who has come slowly and haltingly to an uneasy truce with my aging and often disobedient body, so many of the stories Manne tells about fatness, fatphobia, and our cultural attitudes about body size hit pretty hard. 

This book captured my heart from the first time I read it. As a toddler, the main character is praised for being “a big girl,” but as she continues to grow, she discovers that being a “big girl” soon becomes a negative thing that prevents her from doing what she wishes.

The illustrations are amazing, and fold-out pages can barely contain the growing main character and the empathy you’ll have for her. 

A book you will hug when you’re done reading it, then immediately read it again.

This story shows how an individual who loves crossword puzzles and storytelling can be affected by the disease of dementia.

Elijah notices that his grandmother Eleanor is struggling with language and figures out a way to carry on her legacy. It’s so nice to see this aspect of the disease (memory and language) addressed in a positive, helpful way.

An antique Chinese mirror transforms the lives’ of two women. Shay Garrett lives in the modern times and her grandmother lives in 1900. On the eve of their marriages, both women find themselves transported from one era to the other. I love this epic time-travel tale of suspense where one young woman contends with love, and identity, and knowing too much in a society far removed from the loud, freer modern times she grew up in, and another young woman deals with the confusion of a raucous world where decorum doesn’t exist, nothing makes sense, and her granddaughter's handsome fiancé is someone she hasn’t got the strength to resist.  

An epistolary novel written as a letter from an elderly German man explaining his time as a soldier on the Eastern Front to his grandson. The novel has both the immediacy of a wartime narrative and the introspection of a memoir. “Eat now, sleep now, march now, follow your leader — that’s what they’d demanded of us; we’d followed, and they’d led us into disaster,” the narrator says as he describes his own predicament, but it serves to explain the horrors of the regime as a whole. It resonated for me personally, highlighting the silence and shame that surrounds the experiences of so many Germans who were young adults during WW2. Starritt is half-Scottish and half-German, and We Germans was inspired in part by his grandfather’s time on the Eastern Front. The novel was the recipient of the Dayton Peace Prize.

This is a fictional story about a boy searching for his Gramps’s favorite bird during the Christmas Bird Count. 

I’m sure there are many young readers who don’t think they know enough to participate in something so grand as the Christmas Bird Count. But I’m confident that this book will reassure them that they know more than they think as they confidently identify the birds deftly illustrated by Maria Luisa Di Gravio. Lisa Amstutz, the author, has also included in the backmatter a birding checklist to get little bird nerds started. I think this story will inspire a lot of families to start their own birding tradition.