98 Books Like Over the Under, and Around the Square

I have a brother who is fifteen years my junior. When he was small, I often read him stories. One of our shared favourites, read over and over, was Sendak’s Wild Things. It’s a masterpiece.

He usually wrote the text, as well as making the wonderful pictures, and the text is short, simple, rhythmic, and beautiful. Sendak was a poet as well as an artist.

Think about it: a child of five and a young woman of twenty, reading the same book, poring over the illustrations together, and both having a whale of a time.

If you know a child of picture-book age who doesn’t own Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are—buy it for them!

I love children’s books that provide lessons for both kids and adults.

The salient friendship is not between the stuffed rabbit and the boy but between the stuffed rabbit and another toy—the Skin Horse. The life lessons for adults are revealed mainly through the discussions between the Velveteen Rabbit and the Skin Horse. About love, loss, aging, and what true love truly means. Pay close attention to the part where the Skin Horse, old and wise, explains what it means to be “real.” 

I recognized myself as one of those people who “breaks easily” or has “to be carefully kept.” Life altered this, but this book raised my awareness. Published in 1922, some of the language is old-fashioned, but I find that makes it more charming. 

Pooh Bear and his friends have been favorites since I was old enough to hold a book. A. A. Milne’s poetry is wonderful, but when Pooh and Piglet come on the scene, there’s a special magic. Clinically depressed Eeyore and bossy Rabbit and motherly Kanga entertained me long after I was technically the right age for reading their stories.

I love this collection because it includes so many favorites and really takes you on a journey through the charming world of the Hundred Acre Wood. 

Have you ever listened to a song that was just okay? But after hearing it several times, it grew on you? This is a book that I originally gave a 4-star review. But then I read it a few times more. Then I read it aloud. I just updated the review to 5 stars.

It’s a fun rhyming story about the assumptions we make about others—often based on bad information. Kids will enjoy a very humorous story about a monster who fears “hue-mans” who befriends a boy who fears monsters. Adults will have discovered a book about diversity with awesome illustrations that can be read on demand repeatedly without going insane.

This simple, sweet, picture book, like others in the Elephant and Piggy series, deals with different animals who are trying to solve a problem together. I liked the book because it portrays how differences don’t matter when you care about another. To show how differences can be overcome and not be reasons to divide is wonderful, especially when the concept is shown to the very young reader.

This very engaging, well-written (and weighty!) book shares Harry Green’s personal experiences with snakes, along with an overview of the history, biology, and wide range of snakes—from their unique lifestyles and diet to their behavior and amazing adaptations to living in so many different environments on land, under the earth, in the seas and water, and even gliding through the air.

The text is complemented by color images of many different snake species by internationally-known nature photographers Michael and Patricia Fogden. Overall, an excellent resource for all things Snake!  

This wonderful Asian fantasy (the first of a duology) is about a young woman who has the rare ability to control flying wolf-like creatures. This ability plunges her into the middle of political intrigue as forces push her to weaponize this ability and use the beasts as battle mounts. The most unique thing about the book is how it questions the ethics of humans using animals for their purposes. Most fantasies unquestioningly use animal mounts as weapons/vehicles or at most use an animal’s death to trigger a cheap emotional response. This book puts the ethics of using magnificent creatures for human concerns at its very heart. It demonstrates a respect for the natural world that seems consistent with Shinto teaching and that I find too rare in fantasy.

Homeopath Sadhana Thakkar helps to dispel the negative image of snakes by revealing how profoundly snake remedies can help humans heal and awaken.

The author offers an introduction to the physiology, temperament, lifestyle, and survival strategies of many snakes, and reveals how homeopaths match these patterns to effective venom-based remedies.

Homeopathy itself is a fascinating study, and Thakkar does an excellent job of deepening our understanding of how and why it works through her many stories of humans successfully treated with snake remedies. I found this book super informative and fascinating to read!  

Although this is book 4, I recommend starting with the first book of the series. I chose this book because it ended the American Street Kings with a bang and it’s my favorite out of all the books in the series, even though it’s super dark (readers should note the trigger warnings). Throughout the book, there were so many twists and turns that I wasn’t sure how, or even if, Ink and Neon would get their happy ever after (HEA).

Do you love animals and seeing them within stories but sometimes just want something shorter than a full-length novel?

Then check out Animal Kingdom, a Havok anthology that includes 48 pieces of flash fiction (1000 words or less). Every piece features an animal and celebrates animal and human connections. Several pieces are fantasy, but (bonus) the collection also includes stories for fans of science fiction, thriller, mystery, and humor.

Pick up this book if you want a lot of different clean stories, fantasy and beyond, which feature many different types of animal companions (ranging from photogenic snakes, light-carrying moths, and more)!