NOTE: Early Readers are starting to read for themselves. They need easier books, now, but something with substance. It's a tricky time to find books that interest them, but don't frustrate them.

Seven Blind Mice

By Ed Young

Simple enough in concept and presentation that early readers will be happy with this book, but deep enough in its thinking that they will come back to it again and again. A brisk and colorful retelling of the story of seven blind men examining parts of an elephant and mistaking it for the whole, Young does a fabulous job incorporating other concepts in miminal space: like days of the week, colors, and ordinal numbers.

Hush! A Thai Lullaby
by Minfong Ho
Illustrated by Holly Meade

The pictures are unique and beautiful, made of torn paper collage. The story, based on a lullaby, follows the mother as she shushes animal after animal around the farm in the forlorn hope of getting her baby to sleep.

The quiet rhythm of the book, the eternal theme that all children can relate to, the seeming hopelessness of the task, all add up to a suspenseful read.

Best of all, the language is simple, repetitive, and mildly rhyming, which will help young readers pick up the thread fairly easily.