That sure is swell

Mickey Mouse, fecal matter, and the very best children's books

I have a new job. Like many of my most favorite jobs (stand-up comedy, my internship at the Arizona Commission on the Arts, motherhood), it is unpaid. Every few days, a little girl calls or voice memos me to talk about her fecal matter, and I applaud her. In the voice of Mickey Mouse.

How did I come to find this most hallowed of voiceover work, you ask? Where all great things come from: my Facebook mom group.

My friend, let’s call her B, had been having quite a bit of trouble potty-training her daughter. Her daughter would pee just fine in the toilet but refused the other of the two numbers, found the toilet scary, would cry every time, refuse, hold it in, get horrible stomachaches, etc. It was all very dramatic and terrible, as so many developmental milestones can be! She set out a plea on a Facebook post. As a reward for pooping in the toilet, they had been calling her sister, who would congratulate her in the voice of Elsa. This was extremely motivating to a Disney-obsessed kiddo. But sometimes her sister was busy. Would anyone here be willing to be a DB (Doodie Backup)? Anyone who did other great characters, ideally Mickey or Minnie Mouse, her daughter’s other favorites?

I am…weirdly good at the Mickey Mouse voice (imo, ito, irazo (in my opinion, in tyler’s opinion, in rowan and zoe’s opinion — it’s how I’ve gotten them to eat MANY pieces of broccoli over the years)) so I volunteered, and what followed has been the most delightful, bizarre gigs I’ve ever had.

It’s almost like the universe knew I deserved a whimsical remuneration for picking up two enormous, oblong human feces with the aid of only two napkins from Pizza Planet at Disneyland last year, thanks to my own daughter’s then-toilet issues.

In this merry spirit of whimsy, I’d like to share the results of 5 years of exhaustive research: the Very Best Children’s Books. I have read about 1700 of them, many of them 300 times each (looking at you, Pout-Pout Fish), but these are the ones I will never, ever donate and when my children are 14 and reading adult books I will lovingly pin them down in their beds and insist we read one before they enter their VR astro-bedrooms or whatever the hell is going to be happening in 10 years. But seriously, reading books in bed with them every night has been one of my top-favorite activities of parenthood. These are why:

Donald Hall’s Ox-Cart Man. The most beautifully meditative, bucolic book on how life used to be aligned with seasons and the land around you. I never tire of it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He’s a Poet Laureate and was the first poetry editor of the Paris Review, nbd.

Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius is a gorgeous exploration of life’s greatest purpose: to leave the world more beautiful than it was before it met you.

-A.C. Fitzpatrick’s Margot the Moon Landing is a riveting look at the all-consuming obsessions of childhood and the lonely feeling of not being understood by those around you.

Daniel Pinkwater’s Wempires perfect ‘90s book is now a rare find, so grab a used copy where you can!!!!! I grew up with my parents giggling reading this to me, and now I do the same for my kids. Two years ago, Rowan requested we all go as wempires (Jewish vampires, basically) for Halloween.

Alice McLerran and Barbara Cooney’s Roxaboxen is so unexpectedly moving!!!! Shows what kids can do with a little patch of nothing, what imagination and wonder and joy can unfold from a little square of land, and how much childhood imagination can mean to an adult, years and a lifetime later. I tear up at it often!

Ooh La La, Max in Love was a staple of my childhood. Maira Kalman has the same Modigliani-type drawing style as my mom, it’s a book that just feels like home to me. It’s wacky and poetic and abstract and very intellectual-elite-art-world-New York. I love it.

Phoebe Wahl is a master!!! All of her kids books are among my favorites, but The Blue House has a special place in my heart for helping kids process leaving the only house they’ve known. Sonya’s Chickens explains how to process death (via animals) and the natural circle of life in the animal kingdom. Little Witch Hazel is about a busy gnome learning to chillllllll. Her illustrations are the colorful, exuberant stuff of childhood dreams.

-Rosemary Wells’s Voyage to the Bunny Planet is a whimsical, sweet take on what life could be like if a bunny queen could come and erase your bad day and give you the day you should have had, instead (relatable). My kids love it.

-Mo Willem’s Should I Share My Ice Cream? made my kids laugh so, so hard for like almost an entire year. My friend who’s a Speech and Language Pathologist says that she loves to use this book specifically to help neurodivergent kids learn how to read visual and emotional cues.

-Vera B. Williams’s A Chair for My Mother is about a family struggling to save enough money to buy a comfortable chair after their apartment burned down, with all their things in it. A beautifully-rendered lesson on resilience and the power of community.

-Jamie Lee Curtis’s Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born is a delightful tale of adoption. So many books outline infancy as growing from the same mom’s tummy as the one that raised them, and though Zoe knows she didn’t grow in my stomach, she wasn’t ever seeing that experience represented in the books we read. I wanted to make sure she read about her experience, too, and didn’t just hear about it anecdotally. This book is about adoption, not foster/resource parenting, but the idea of getting a call and going to the hospital to meet the baby after she was born has helped her see her story told!

-Abby Hanlon’s Dory Fantasmagory chapter book series (5 books) features the most delightful, cheeky, funny, imaginative heroine since Eloise. I loved reading these to Rowan and I can’t wait ‘til Zoe is old enough so I can read them again. I hope to never forget the sound of Rowan giggling uncontrollably at this messy, lovable, goofy character!

-Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw’s Same Same, But Different is about two pen pals in New York and India, learning about each other’s worlds through letters.

-Liz Garton Scanlon’s All the World is the best book for ages 0-5 and going. Quiet, rhyming, rhythmic, thoughtful, and tender. A must-have.

-Sophie Blackall’s Hello, Lighthouse is the perfect, poetic tale of a lighthouse keeper and his family. There’s no Willem Defoe, but I try not to hold that against it.

-Last, crucially, is Michael Ian Black’s Naked! which has captivated the hearts and butts of my children. It’s a bright, joyous book about a toddler running through her house naked, feeling the pure joy of being N A K E D ! and as anyone under 6 will tell you: it’s deeply relatable. Zoe had it memorized in 2 days, cover to cover.

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I sincerely hope these bring you and your kids or friends’ kids or your enemy’s kids some joy. And please, please comment with your all-time favorites. I’m always looking to elevate and expand our collection! Plus I c a n n o t read the 5-Minute Frozen Tales one more time.