by Maggie Downs posted in Life

Don?t get me wrong. I love Goodnight Moon as much as the next mama. But the book has sold 48 million copies since it was first published in 1947, and I think about half of them ended up in my nursery as well-intentioned gifts from friends and family.
There have to be other wonderful books for babies and young children, right"
That?s what Michelle Franke of Los Angeles thought too. Her son was just a few months old when she made a plea on Facebook, soliciting suggestions for beloved baby books. Goodnight Moon just wasn?t cutting it.

?I noticed the colorful pages he was locked on, but when we got to the black and white pages, he would just look across the room,? she said. ?It wasn?t something that engaged him.? The suggestions that Franke received on Facebook surprised her. The post garnered hundreds of comments, and not just from parents. They came from aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends without children -- essentially people who had deep and abiding connections with children?s literature for one reason or another.
?Almost everybody remembers the books they loved as children,? Franke says.

Here?s the cool twist. Franke is the executive director for PEN Center USA, an organization that works to protect the rights of writers worldwide, strives to stimulate interest in the written word, and helps cultivate and support literary communities. So she and her staff culled books from the sourced Facebook post and compiled the suggestions i...