Best Books For 2-Year-Olds
(24-36 months)
Quick Things You Need To Know:
- Smash the kyriarchy: Normalize diversity
- normalizing diversity in gender, race, disability, and caretakers
- Feature protagonists of color, with disabilities, etc. who with agency, not as background tokens
- Feature characters with disabilities as competent equals
- Recognize that not all homes and neighborhoods look like the ones we live in (and they are no better or worse than ours.)
- Familiarity vs. Novelty: At this age they will want to re-read the same book over and over for a few weeks or even months in a row.
- Repetition: They’ll develop interests in particular themes: trucks, farm animals, beards (yes, like the facial hair), babies, etc. Just run with it. If you get really sick of a particular book, try getting another book with the same theme to mix it up and keep yourself from dying of boredom.
- Meet tots where they are:
- Validating stories that show they aren’t alone in confusion, clumsiness, lack of control over day-to-day life
- Cognitive development
- From 24-30 months: Temper tantrums in full swing. Starting to feel agency in feeding themselves with a cup/spoon, and getting undressed by themselves – but they still suck at everything, and get suuuper frustrated when a sock won’t come off. Starting to realize how weak they are while all the older folks around them can do these things easily.
- From 30-36 months: Preschool enrollment opens up about starts around 2.5-2.75 years, so expect to deal with some separation anxiety, new school jitters (if they previously stayed at home with a caregiver), and the adjustment from lots of open play at home to a more structured day schedule (depending on the home and school atmospheres.)
- Non-linear reading: Don’t expect a kid under 3 to sit still and read a book cover-to-cover. Around 18 months and again at 2.5 years and 3.5 years, your kid will have a big cognitive leap and will be more ready for storybooks with increasingly linear story lines.
- Destruction: Some kids are delicate and cautious. Mine were not. Expect all books to be tugged, thrown, and stepped on. Never leave them alone with a library book. This is not the time for delicate flaps and pop-up books.
- Cognitive development
- Validating stories that show they aren’t alone in confusion, clumsiness, lack of control over day-to-day life
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Quick & Messy Book List:
Sensory Books
They’re starting to understand properties (ex: red, soft) and putting language to experience.
1-year-olds are still going love the sensory books from the 6-12-month collection, even more so now that they can confidently turn pages and sit with the books and ponder them independently.
my first wonder woman – cute, with caveats – text is similar to pat the bunny. As usual, bad/good guys dynamic because heaven forbid we have superheroes with a growth mindset. Not the BEST touch and feel book, but super cute if you’re into Wonder Woman. At the end, we see “Wonder woman is one of the world’s strongest super heroes. Look – there’s another little super hero!” And the reader sees a mirror. All the superheroes pictured in the crowd are white, so we’re skipping this. 6m-3.5
Pat the Bunny, if you can stand the comb binding (I cannot – auditory sensory HELL) and the smell of the ‘flowers.’ I see they have a hardcover and paperback, which I haven’t gotten my hands on. I’ve never seen a copy without a comb binding. But then again, I don’t get out much.
Little Earthquakes top picks
Worth noting that none of these characters use pronouns. Although Firebears tend to be topless and there are some pink construction hats in Construction Kitties, we were able to easily portray these characters as gender-fluid.
Firebears, the Rescue Team – So drama! Much truck!
Construction Kitties – breakfast and lunch routines, plus a little mystery. Also trucks and cats!
Jamberry – At this age, they’re just starting to understand what is and isn’t physically possible. They will feel smart pointing it out when unlikely things happen, plus they find it it hilarious.
Helping Hands Series
This series includes nonbinary characters, racial diversity, and lots of gender-counter-narratives with caretaking fathers and female-presenting and male-presenting characters breaking behavioral gender constructs. There are also disabled characters and multiracial families.
Clean It – Dad uses an inhaler and shares housework equally with mom and kids, the protagonist uses a leg brace. The characters are ambigulously Latinx.
Fix it! – Female-and Black-presenting kid builds a toybox.
Cook it! – Dad takes the bulk of childcare and cooking responsibility in this one. A multiracial female-presenting kid goes grocery shopping and cooks for the entire family. This was both Q & R2’s favorite of the series. I checked out the bilingual Spanish version, unfortunately it’s flimsier than the English-only version.
Grow it! – This is our least favorite one, but the kids still enjoy it. There’s a tokenized person in a wheelchair, and there was one scene I wasn’t a fan of but I can’t remember what happened (they might be spraying people with a hose?) where I taped the pages together so the kids wouldn’t notice it. Or maybe they are standing on a compost pile, which I didn’t want my toddlers mimicking.
Back when these were the only books I could find normalizing racial diversity in 2011, I didn’t care for the one with a white kid (there are plenty of white kids in books gardening) but now in 2019 where illustrators are tending toe erase and even villify white blonde kids (re: Snow Pony, problematic) I’m glad this series focused on inclusion for white kids.
Everyday Life
Seeing everyday life from a third perspective helps them process what is going on each day, why we have these routines, and creates an almost heroic model for kids who get along and cooperate.
Babybug magazine includes an intro story featuring nonbinary Kim & their stuffy Carrots doing everyday toddler/preschooler things. It’s also nice and durable for little hands.
The Tom and Pippo series is cishet normative with a dad who is mostly absent/working and a mom who does the bulk of childcare. Tom is a flawed character – he makes mistakes and blames them on Pippo. I find this endearing, and this is the first series of really validating books for how hard it can be to tackle those little challenges toddlers and preschoolers go through every day. The pacing is just right to chill kids out, and they feel seen.
Clean Up Time – For ages 1-3, these are often staples in preschool classrooms. Some of the books are a little problematic. The white author tokenizes racial diversity but isn’t savvy about stereotypes. Since she tries to show ‘bad’ and ‘good’ behavior, one of her stories reinforces the trope of an aggressive Black female-presenting kid. Some of them are just boring. but they can be helpful for tackling and discussing specific issues. Clean Up Time is a decent one, it was our favorite. The rest – meh.
Big Challenges
Boo Hoo Boo-Boo – Both Earthquakes still reference this adorable book, which normalizes racial diversity, multiracial families, grandparents, adipositivity, and everyday clumsy toddler mistakes. It’s a short book, fun to read out loud, and utterly lovely. This is one of the few books I am actively sad the Earthquakes have grown out of.
BAH! Said the baby – Both older siblings and toddlers learning to speak will find this fun and validating. In this story, the baby’s siblings and parent can’t understand what they are trying to say. This is SUPER validating for toddlers who get frustrated with adults who don’t understand them, and it helps mitigate many of the explosions of the terrible twos.
Everyday Life
Going to bed, taking a walk, asking for hugs (and consent). All good stuff kids like to review and practice.
Goodnight Moon – As an adult and older kid I found this book hideous and boring. I find the mystery and lack of closure unnerving. But it really is fun to read with little kids. And you can read it when you’re like 90% asleep. I’ve done it.
Soothing Classics
Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs is one of the most soothing read-alouds I’ve ever read. There’s something about it that is both endearing and relaxing.
Hat On, Hat Off – Normalizing racial diversity (the characters present as south/east Asian), plus celebrating this milestone – being able to put on and take off your own hat at the age of 2 is a BFD.
Little Blue Truck– I love that the little Blue Truck (who I coded as feminine, since the only other female in the book are female (mothers, chickens) by necessity) does the hard thing and helps a jerk even though the dump truck is a turd. The rest of the books on this series feel like a cash-grab and the underlying message doesn’t resonate with us. Also, it’s a good book to perfect your farm animal sounds, which is often a requisite of parenting.
