Fans pick 52 books like Just Like My Dad

Hair Love is a heartwarming and gentle book about a little girl named Zuri and her father struggling to do her hair. It is filled with an abundance of humorous and joyful moments, but where the book really shines for me is in its unabashed celebration of Zuri’s hair. In a country where Black femmes are constantly being labeled as less-than, the importance of this book cannot be overstated.

I love good rhyming books and this one works! Plus there is a heart-warming refrain that especially gets me at the end of the story. “Of all the children that ever could be, you are the one made just for me.” It’s about a father who adores his new baby from its soft, tiny hands to all the cute things the child does. The illustrations depict a very large, round father who reminds me of a gentle Paul Bunyan. I could see it as a baby shower gift for dads. 

This ode to dad is told from a child to its father using animals to illustrate the great things about fathers such as a papa polar bear being cool. It’s a smaller gift size and even though it contains spare text, it says way more than a greeting card could ever say! Eric Carle’s colorful paper cut-outs have a natural appeal to kids. This would be a great book to pair with a handmade paper cut-out Father’s Day card made by your child. 

I wish I had a book like this when I was a moody teenager! My dad and I could have been closer and shared more things. A journal like this helps show pre-teens that their father was pretty cool when he was younger, and that parents and kids probably have more in common than they think! This book for 8-12-year-old daughters has questions that both dad and daughter answer plus prompters such as What is your greatest talent? It’ll make a great keepsake for daughters to revisit when they are an adult.

How can you not love a book with this title? Jan Thomas happens to be one of my favorite picture book creators, and this book clearly shows why. Her books are all surprising, quirky, and slightly absurd, three things I strive for in my own work. I love the idea of a cowboy who sings lullabies to his cows every night. And while this cowboy starts off fine, he is constantly distracted by scary things he sees in the dark, like a spider (that turns out to be a flower) and a snake that is actually just a stick. Kids love it when adults act silly, and this hysterical cowboy will have them howling with laughter. If you like Sandra Boyton, check out Jan Thomas’s work.

I liked this story so much that I read it a second time. Author Mary Connealy took me to the Nebraska Sandhills and showed me the beauty of the country while painting the beauty of the woman who lived there. Such a sweet love story of a mother who gives all she has for her sons—and the man who surprisingly gives back to her something she never dreamed she'd have again. 

Riders of Judgment is part of a series of high-geared western novels by Frederick Manfred, whose best-known work is Lord Grizzly. I choose this novel because of its fictional and figurative treatment of the Johnson County War, a famous event in Wyoming history. In his fictional treatment, Manfred gives symbolic and mythic dimensions to his characters, and he tells a compelling story with original, not standard, characters. Several years ago, when Manfred came to our college in Wyoming to participate in a literary conference, he told us about how, in the mid-1950s, he researched the area and interviewed family members of some of the original participants. 

Louis L'Amour wrote dozens of novels about the West but this one I loved because of the sweet wistfulness that was contrasted with the harsh reality of frontier living. Evie Teal is a widow whose husband rode out for cattle and never came back, leaving her alone in the wilderness with two children and only guesses as to how he could have died. Conn Conagher is a poetry-loving, quiet cowboy who hasn't much but his integrity and good name. Neither thinks the other could possibly be interested in them, and the quiet, understated love story just draws you in. 

I knew just about from the first page that ‘The Buckskin,’ as they call it, is a place I’d like to go. Just reminiscing about family vacations there had me wanting more. In book one, with Lucy, we get to see the ranch from her artist’s perspective and I could picture her sitting in the corner of the stall sketching the horses and I wanted to join her. The property is so well drawn out for the reader that it is easy to wander down the snow-line paths between the cabins and the dining hall, and sneak around to the bunkhouse for a bonfire. Even in the dead of winter, the atmosphere is so warm and inviting I’ve already signed up for another visit. Thank goodness there are ten books in this series!

This book is fun! A rare autobiography of one of early rodeo’s star athletes, Vera McGinnis tells her story as a non-ranching woman who began a career in rodeo riding broncs and relay racing. This book reads like an action film with an early twentieth-century style of prose. We get bronc rides, relay wrecks, barns even stowaway rides on trains as Vera breaks into rodeo life. Through her firsthand account, readers are introduced to the rodeo “family.” Vera tells of the physical setbacks that rodeo contestants faced, the personal sacrifices cowgirls made to keep rodeoing, and perhaps most enlightening is the almost addictive lure of rodeo that resulted in cowgirls prioritizing it in their life.