Children's books

I loved a wide variety of things, some usual, some strange. If you give a mouse a cookie was great. I had a coloring book of ancient world architectural styles, which sounds weird but it was captivating; I also had an Egyptian hieroglyph stamp set, which blew my mind.

I loved books that were way too confusing for me too. Trying to read adult size books was something that sped up my reading way before the other kids. I looked through my dad’s Einstein biography and his Tolkien books. I loved the old world style of Winnie the Pooh’s original illustrations and Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking glass. Nancy Drew, The Egypt Game, The Angel and the Soldier Boy, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Jillian Jiggs, The Hungry Caterpillar, Frederick the poet, The Golden Eggand Redwall; Little Black Sambo, who outsmarts tigers and has pancakes with his mom and dad [he's from India in my copy].

And The Maze, which you can ‘read’ online. It’s an actual maze, each page is a door. The pictures are really incredible, and it just draws you in. It's a great early book to get you ready to look at art in museums and notice details, so that you can enjoy the work even more. And most of all, it's crazy fun! Masquerade was another puzzle type book that sucked me in. It’s very difficult to solve.

This illustrated Wizard of Oz with the best illustrations ever done by Charles Santore; fairy tales with medieval-like illustrations like Beauty and the Beast & Sleeping Beauty & St. George and the Dragon. Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was amazing, as was The Secret of the Andes, a book that still makes me nervous. 

It's truly a book with a big impact. A favorite of mine was From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. What an introduction to the Renaissance, museums, the ancient world, sculpting, art and life, I loved it once I realized where it was going--and even then it always surprised me. 

Animalia by Gaeme Base, has such gorgeous images that it should still be bought simply as a coffee table book. It's really amazing and detailed, like Bosch level thought was involved.

Mercer Mayer’s little critter books,  My Cousin Katie on a farm, Arthur,  The Busy World of Richard Scarry and Maine’s Blueberries for Sal.

I also loved The Water Babies book, where a young boy goes to a magical land of sea creatures; the illustrations are amazing. Halloween themed books were great too, like Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep. Little Witch’s Big Night by Deborah Hautzig was great–the illustrations were so adorable.

My favorite of all was a book of interesting scary stories called Now you see them now you don’t–it has fascinating, subtle stories that are more strange and ghostly than horror.

As a kid my only cookbook was a cookie one, the Alpha-Bakery Gold Medal Children’s Cookbook. Each letter has a recipe and it has very cute illustrations. I still love it.