Here are 100 books that National Geographic Readers fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m the author of 25 children’s books, and I recently moved to a small mountain town that has come to co-exist with wild black bears by learning how to properly store and dispose of our food (rather than the alternative, which was to eliminate the bears!). Ever since I’ve lived there, I’ve been fascinated by human-bear interactions, having a few of my own now! When Yosemite Conservancy put out a call for children’s stories, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about—how people can help keep bears safe and wild through proper food storage. I’m a huge advocate for bears and all wildlife!
So Big! Yosemitewas the first board book I had read that is sold by Yosemite Conservancy. I thought, “I wish I had written this book” because it perfectly captures what small children feel when they visit Yosemite National Park. It features a black bear throughout the story, with a repeating question, “How big is so big!” From black bears to El Capitan to Tuolumne Meadows, everything in Yosemite National Park is “so big!” to little ones.
This board book takes the youngest visitors on a tour of Yosemite National Park's BIG sights, including Yosemite Falls, Half Dome, El Capitan, and Tuolumne Meadows. Yosemite is a big place for little people, but with a whimsical bear and squirrel as their guides, children will feel right at home in their national park.
I’m the author of 25 children’s books, and I recently moved to a small mountain town that has come to co-exist with wild black bears by learning how to properly store and dispose of our food (rather than the alternative, which was to eliminate the bears!). Ever since I’ve lived there, I’ve been fascinated by human-bear interactions, having a few of my own now! When Yosemite Conservancy put out a call for children’s stories, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about—how people can help keep bears safe and wild through proper food storage. I’m a huge advocate for bears and all wildlife!
National Geographic Look & Learn Bears is a perfect introduction to bears for toddlers. As a former Montessori preschool teacher, I appreciate the simplicity of the text, photographs, and book design. The book shows five common types of bears (black, brown, polar, pandas, and sun bears). Each bear is shown over two-page spreads and gives one interesting fact that would appeal to the toddler crowd. I could just see my own son at that age enjoying this book.
With fun photos and colourful, approachable design, this wonderful board book guides you through life as a bear, including hibernation, playtime with cubs, the smallest and biggest bears, and finding food!
I’m the author of 25 children’s books, and I recently moved to a small mountain town that has come to co-exist with wild black bears by learning how to properly store and dispose of our food (rather than the alternative, which was to eliminate the bears!). Ever since I’ve lived there, I’ve been fascinated by human-bear interactions, having a few of my own now! When Yosemite Conservancy put out a call for children’s stories, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about—how people can help keep bears safe and wild through proper food storage. I’m a huge advocate for bears and all wildlife!
I recommendIf You Were a Bear for two big reasons. First, I love that near the end, it addresses proper food storage and why it’s problematic for wild bears to develop a taste for human food. This is the basis of my own book. It’s incredibly important to the survival of bears that humans be vigilant about proper food storage and disposal. The other reason I recommend If You Were a Bearis because the rhyming text opens with the imaginative question, What would it be like to wake up being a bear cub? We know children love to stretch their imaginations! Once the premise is introduced, the story goes on to show a cub’s first year of life.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a bear? This award winning children's book (NAI - National Association of Interpreters 2010 Media award) explores that question.children learn about the life of a bear and how people can help protect them. The story was written by a former National Park ranger wildlife biologist and bear specialist.
I’m the author of 25 children’s books, and I recently moved to a small mountain town that has come to co-exist with wild black bears by learning how to properly store and dispose of our food (rather than the alternative, which was to eliminate the bears!). Ever since I’ve lived there, I’ve been fascinated by human-bear interactions, having a few of my own now! When Yosemite Conservancy put out a call for children’s stories, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about—how people can help keep bears safe and wild through proper food storage. I’m a huge advocate for bears and all wildlife!
What I found most enjoyable about If I Were a Bearis that it uses a rhyming text to share simple facts about various Alaskan bears. It’s a lovely combination of lyrical writing and nonfiction, with soft watercolor illustrations by Erik Brooks. Young children love hearing rhyming texts (their brains actually need rhythm and patterns for healthy development!), so whenever I find a book with well-written rhyme that conveys factual information, it’s a winner in my book!
From the author and illustrator of If I Were a Whale and If I Were A Bird, comes this colorful, rhyming board book that playfully features bears found in Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. Beautiful watercolor illustrations of bears of all sizes are sure to delight readers young and old.
Toddlers will love this fun introduction to bears, in this beautifully illustrated board book that shares facts about these amazing animals in an imaginative way.
If I were a polar bear my ears would be small, my feet would be furry, I'd have barely any tail at all.
I am the author-illustrator of funny picture books for kids, including the interactive book, Animals Go Vroom!. As an illustrator, I revel in creating jokes and storylines in the pictures that kids can follow along with by themselves. And as a mother of two small children myself, I know first-hand the magical experience of reading books with toddlers that keep them guessing and giggling along the way.
Poor Fergus is no good at hiding. In this funny seek-and-find book, Fergus, a big brown bear with glasses, gets tips from the narrator on how to get better at hiding. As the story goes on, Fergus starts to blend in better with the crowds, and it gets trickier and trickier to spot him. It’s a great read-aloud, and kids will find it hilarious how bad he is at hiding at first. But they’ll need to use their eagle eyes when all the fun characters from the book come together in a big crowd at the end.
Play the funniest game of hide and seek ever with Fergus, a bear who's very, very bad at hiding.
The hilarious illustrator of I Don't Want to Be a Frog brings picture book fans a super-silly, interactive story that will have children giggling from start to finish. Follow huge, loveable Fergus and see all the many ways in which he is TERRIBLE at playing hide-and-seek, such as standing behind a VERY tiny tree ("Found you, Fergus! That was too easy!") or trying to camouflage in a giant crowd of bunnies and squirrels ("Try bears, Fergus. Bears!").
Hiking in the Sierra has been equal parts recreation and profession since I’ve been an adult. I’ve worked for the concessionaire in Yosemite Valley, surveyed lakes for rare amphibians, completed a PhD on alpine plants, and, over the past 15 years, written nine books on the Sierra Nevada. I continue to spend every summer obsessively exploring its trails, peaks, and remote lake basins, always excited to see a new view, find a rare flower, or simply see a favorite place in a new light. The rest of the year is spent writing—and reading what others have written, broadening my knowledge about my favorite place on Earth before I set out on the next summer’s adventures.
Rachel Mazur was a wildlife biologist in Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks for many years. A core component of her job was “solving the bear problem”—generation upon generation of bears dependent on human food and ever more aggressive and crafty as they endeavored to satisfy this desire. Her story artfully weaves together the history of bear-human interactions in the Sierra, scientific research on bear habits and diets, and importantly sociology, especially people’s changing perception of acceptable wildlife management and visitors changing expectations of the attractions on offer in a national park. The book is skillfully written and thought-provoking, but also heartening as it ends with evidence that changing wildlife management and visitor actions mean bears are slowly becoming wilder again.
As majestic as they are powerful, and as timeless as they are current, bears continue to captivate. Speaking of Bears is not your average collection of stories. Rather, it is the history, compiled from interviews with more than 100 individuals, of how Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon National Parks, all in California's Sierra Nevada, created a human-bear problem so bad that there were eventually over 2,000 incidents in a single year. It then describes the pivotal moments during which park employees used trial and error, conducted research, invented devices, collaborated with other parks, and found funding to get the crisis…
My name is John Priest and I've been writing children's books, mystery stories, and factual articles since the 1980's. I've been traditionally published and have publshed my own books too. I love writing funny books and rhyming stories. Seeing my 5 grandchildren reading a book and laughing is one of the best sights of all. I've worked in schools and really believe that having your imagination ignited by any book is the start of building your own personality and creating wonderment in your own mind. And who knows? Maybe one day your child will write the next batch of beautiful books!
The title of the book tells you that the book is going to be F-U-N. Hugless Douglas. When Douglas the bear wakes up after his Winter sleep, all he really wants is a nice big hug! Douglas sets off in search of the best hug, and the hugs he gets just seem to lack something, but what?
Does Hugless Douglas finally get the hug he really wants? This is such a lovely, heart-warming book and it is especially nice at bedtime!
Hugless Douglas in on a hunt for the perfect bear hug! Join him and see why this delightful cuddly tale has been entertaining families for ten years.
Hugless Douglas is a huggable, lovable young brown bear who wakes up one morning in need of a hug. He goes to try and find one but none of them seem quite right.
This very special anniversary edition of Hugless Douglas' first adventure is a must for fans of this much-loved series, which has sold over 1.6 million copies in 26 languages to date. David Melling is one of the UK's best-loved author-illustrators…
I am a school and public librarian as well as a writer. I also serve as a member of the Children’s Book Committee of the Bank Street College of Education. We review hundreds of books each year for consideration of a place on our list –The Best Children’s Books of the Year. I've chosen to recommend some lighthearted picture books with Jewish characters or themes because a number of my own books fit into this category. Mitzi’s Mitzvah, Little Red Ruthie, and Dance the Hora, Isadora! are three of my Jewish themed books. Each of these titles has been selected by PJ Library, an organization that sends a book each month to children.
I always recommend this genius book as a wonderful companion to my own Hanukkah book. The young audience is always one step ahead of the old woman in Kimmel’s story, and this engages them from the start all the way through to the comforting end. There’s an old-fashioned folktale-like quality to this story which makes it a sure winner!
Bubba Brayna’s legendary latkes lure an unexpected visitor into her home in this playful Hanukkah tale from a master storyteller.
Bubba Brayna makes the best latkes in the village, and on the first night of Hanukkah, the scent of her cooking wakes a hungry, adorable bear from his hibernation. He lumbers into town to investigate, and Bubba Brayna—who does not see or hear very well—mistakes him for her rabbi. She welcomes the bear inside to play the dreidel game, light the menorah, and enjoy a scrumptious meal.
However, after her well-fed guest leaves, there's a knock at the door—it's the…
I have been captivated by the emotional power of picture books since I was a child and have spent my adult life reading, sharing, and trying to write the kinds of books that connect to the youngest of readers on a deeper level. In Looking for Smile, I tried to write about the day when I was five years old and experienced real sadness for the first time. This became a story about Bear and his friend, Smile. My favorite kind of picture books are those that make me smile and tear up at the same time. I decided I would share some recent books that have had that effect on me…
A dreamlike book about an all-alone bear who befriends a balloon. When the little bear accidentally punctures his new friend, he blames himself. And now the poor thing is not only utterly alone, but is overcome with sadness and self-blame. The delicacy with which this story treats the difficult topics of shame and self-blame is marvelous. Making a bad situation worse by blaming it on yourself is just so relevant to all of our lives, no matter how young we are and this book really captures that in an elemental way. The tender, emotive illustrations are a perfect complement to the delicate and penetrating text.
As a Children’s Librarian for over 30 years, my passion has been for the sound of language. I want children to hear rhythmic, joyful language that will make them fall in love with words. My own career as a storyteller and author continues this same love of language. I try to write my own picture books in such a way that any adult who picks them up will read them out with the same kind of verve and joy that I put into them.
This tale is one long, rousty chant. “Big Black Bear came out of the woods. Stuck his nose in the air and smelled something good!” Just keep that chanting going as Big Black Bear threatens Little Girl and creates havoc in her house, then is caught by Momma Bear and made to apologize. “I’m very sorry, please excuse me. I’m a little black bear, who just turned three.”
Big Black Bear learns his manners after he barges in on Little Girl at the Brown Brick House on Sycamore Street. By the author of Eek! There's a Mouse in the House.
