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How do you find choosing children's books, can you help?!

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lauramelvlleb Mon 06-Oct-14 13:58:16

Hi, I'm an experienced Primary School teacher with 2 young children and I'm trying to start a business that works with having a young family. My mum recommended this forum as she thought I would get really good, well rounded and objective opinions on my idea.

A couple of years ago my mum asked for my help to compile a group of high quality children's books as a gift for my niece in the States (they were struggling to find good books). This was really well received and since then friends of my mum and other family and friends in America have asked for my help compiling books that are both high quality and developmentally matched.

My idea is to offer a one off and subscription based online service. This allows the gift giver to tell me more about the child in question and then I put together a bespoke package of books, gift wrap and send them.

Any feed back would be very much appreciated.

Thanks, Laura

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felice Wed 08-Oct-14 14:11:22

I would be quite interested in this, the English book shops here in Brussels are very expensive, our Waterstones was named a few years ago as the most expensive anywhere.
Amazon UK no longer deliver here.
We are a multi-lingual family and I am always on the look out for good books in English for toddler Grandson.
Perhaps not always for gifts, there is a site called XPats.com which you should check out, it caters for the English speaking community here.

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HildaW Wed 08-Oct-14 15:56:47

Sounds like a good idea - I have noticed that children's books in the US are often a bit too keen to include a very worthy moral theme. Although this is no bad thing in itself, I just find that American books are less than subtle about such things as making friends, bullying and having good manners.
I'm an ex Preschool leader and we had much more success with getting children interested in books and stories if the themes were humorous, anarchic, even just a bit 'naughty'.
Back in those days we always found 'Red House' books had the right choices, not sure whether they are still in business.

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NanKate Wed 08-Oct-14 17:38:34

Yes Red House are still going strong HildaW .

In 2007 my son was Runner Up for the Older Children's books. We went to the Award Ceremony and it was wonderful to see so many children who are bookworms.

www.redhousechildrensbookaward.co.uk/

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HildaW Wed 08-Oct-14 17:46:41

Great NanKate.....I used to live near Oxford and every year we would get invites to their sales at the Witney offices...a great way to bag bargains for our Preschool....happy days.

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