Thrifting: Used Children's Books

I bought Weslandia without even reading it because I'd heard such good things and having now read it, I feel entirely satisfied with my purchase: the accolades are totally deserved; An Egg Is Quiet is the loveliest kind of science, and after See Inside an Egyptian Town I'm very much looking forward to finding other books by R.J. Unstead. One of the reasons I loved used books is the serendipitous introduction to great resources I would have never otherwise found, and this Unstead fellow is a perfect example of that!

Books by James Marshall, Bill Peet, Steven Kellogg and no one else would be a perfectly sufficient reading life for a child.

Another Pigeon book, whee! * I adore Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel more than almost any other children's book. I used to have a Burton treasury but it was too big, and the board book version is too small (abridged!), but this paperback is just right.  * We've borrowed Click, Clack, Moo and I Read Signs from the library and they're both fantastic. I Read Signs and the rest of the Tana Hoban photographically illustrated children's books should be dated and creepy but both J and I both responded quite favorably.

So excited to find a non-un-PC version of Seven Chinese Brothers, and by Margaret Mahy no less! Plus, one of the several Miriam Cohen-Lillian Hoban collaborations, a William Steig and a Mercer Mayer.

I was suspicious of this Kevin Henkes fellow at first, but after reading a few of his books, I've discovered he's not as saccharine as I first suspected, and he actually reminds me of early Rosemary Wells, which can only be a good thing.

Our first introduction to Pat Hutchins was through my purchase of used edition of her book, Good-Night, Owl. Owl was an overnight sensation in the Arrow household, and the widely acclaimed Rosie's Walk was borrowed from the library to similar audience reaction. Finding Rosie plus two more Pat Hutchins books at the thrift shop made today a good day.

The Funny Little Woman is from the team that produced the children's classic Tikki Tikki Tembo; illustrator Blair Lent also did this Caldecott-recognized African folk tale retelling When the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky. 

One of my book-buying rules is to get everything published by the Parents' Magazine Press and they haven't disappointed me yet. School for Sillies has fabulous '70s-vintage illustration, but I also like the moral of the story.

Richard Scarry basically writes preschool textbooks, and that's fine with me.

Bought for resale if anyone will have it, but even I must admit the illustrations in this novelization (picture-book-ization?) of Walt Disney's Pinocchio are pretty lovely.