7 Treasury Book Collections We Love

Harper Collins Treasury of Picture Book Classics: A Child’s First Collection
This treasury contains twelve classic picture books, including Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon, Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, Robert Kraus’s Leo the Late Bloomer and Laura Joffe Numeroff’s If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. The stories are arranged in chronological order of when they were published, and it’s fun to watch the illustrations evolve over the years.

Little Critter’s Family Treasury, by Mercer Mayer
This new collection gathers seven of Mercer Mayer’s classic stories featuring Little Critter, focusing on his relationships with his family members. Just Me and My Mom, Just Me and My Puppy and the other stories in this volume show that even when Little Critter makes more work for his family members when he’s trying to help, his good intentions, and the love they have for each other, always shine through.

Little House Picture Book Treasury: Six Stories of Life on the Prairie, adapted from the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Renée Graef
If you adore the Little House books and can’t wait to get your kids started on them, no matter how young they are, this treasury is the perfect choice for you. Favorite chapters from the longer books appear here as stand-alone stories, including “Going to Town,” “Sugar Snow,” “Christmas in the Big Woods” and three others. Illustrator Renée Graef was chosen because of the similarities between her style and that of Garth Williams, the original Little House illustrator. She took her job seriously, visiting all the Little House historical sites in America to capture the essence of Wilder’s writing.

Frog and Toad Storybook Treasury, by Arnold Lobel
If you’ve read one Frog and Toad book…you’ve absolutely got to read them all, again and again, to explore the unique, tender bond between the hilarious Frog and Toad. This treasury collects all twenty tales featured in Frog and Toad Are Friends, Frog and Toad Together, Frog and Toad all Year and Days With Frog and Toad, and includes the original artwork. This is a great choice if you have early readers who have to put in a certain amount of minutes of reading each day for school or a summer reading program. This book just might last them until the end of the summer!

The 20th Century Children’s Book Treasury: Celebrated Picture Books and Stories to Read Aloud, selected by Janet Schulman
This treasure-trove of 44 the best-loved children’s picture books would be a great resource for a teacher, a child learning to read, new parents starting to build their home libraries, and slightly more seasoned parents who always give in when their kids beg them for a second, no, a third bedtime story. With selections including Swimmy by Leo Lionni, Curious George by H.A. Rey, D.W. the Picky Eater by Marc Brown, Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion and Stellaluna by Janell Cannon, each page contains a guaranteed kid-pleaser that will send adults on a walk down memory lane.

Five Little Monkeys Storybook Treasury, by Eileen Christelow
If you’re looking for one book to take for bedtime stories when you’re on a trip, this is a great choice. Kids love Christelow’s charming monkeys who try and try to be good—but the bed is so bouncy! And when Mama puts them to work cleaning the house for Grandma in Five Little Monkeys with Nothing to Do, kids will laugh at how they undo their own best efforts by tracking dirty footprints across the floor they just cleaned. No matter what their transgression, Mama forgives them every time in these five stories.

A Beatrix Potter Treasury, by Beatrix Potter
When I was a kid, I was enchanted with the miniature versions of Beatrix Potter’s classics, small enough to fit in a child’s hand. But if you don’t want to collect each of Potter’s books, one by one, this treasury gathers many of her greatest hits into one volume with the original art. The ten tales include The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, and The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck. It also includes an illustrated biography of Beatrix. The Tale of Peter Rabbit began its life as a letter to a child, the son of Beatrix’s former governess. The letter is reproduced here. Aspiring writers will be interested to know that Peter Rabbit was rejected by all the publishers Beatrix initially contacted, and she self-published the first 250 copies of it before finally finding a publisher that would take it on. The rest is rabbit history.