One of the really great things about taking our kids to the library all the time is getting the chance to read tons of classic childrens books.

Sometimes I’ll hunt them down, because there’s titles I want to make sure my kids get a chance to read. Curious George titles are in heavy rotation in our house.

Other times, I’ll walk through the kids section at the Rincon library and find ones with cool cover art that turn out to be classic childrens books I didn’t really even know about. That’s the case with these two titles we brought home recently. They’re titles that have been around forever. I couldn’t remember reading either of them in the past, but they each hit me hard right in the feels for different reasons.

Classic Childrens Books: Do You See What I See by Helen Borten

I scope out the “New” section of the library’s kids books every time we go, to take a look at art styles that are coming out currently. When I saw Do You See What I See by Helen Borten on the “New Books” shelf, I picked it up thinking “man, that’s a super cool vintage art style” and “it looks… legit authentic vintage, not just trying to emulate it.”

And I’m an idiot, because yes the book in my hands was new, but it’s a re-release of a book that came out in the 1960s.

Spoiler alert it made me cry.

Reading it… Omg guys. She captured exactly what it’s like to see the world as an artist in this book. I look at trees and I wanna figure out how I’d draw them. I see sticks and think about the different pens I’d use to capture the various thickness of the branches… I see colors I want to mix and shapes that make up cars.

It’s lyrical, the art style is great, and it’s just so freaking perfect.

You can pick up a copy here.

Classic Childrens Books: The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton

And then The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton landed on me and knocked the wind out of my sails. How has this classic childrens book about country living and city living been around for 70 years and I don’t remember it?

Basic plotline of The Little House: House gets built in the country. She longs for the excitement of the city. Urban sprawl brings the city to her.

But that house is a country girl at heart.

Like me.

Spoiler alert it made me cry. 

I grew up in southern California; I was never meant to stay there. As time went on, as years of commuting 30-40 miles each way to and from work came and went, it became more and more clear. Every time Josh and I would leave California to visit somewhere less… city… I would find myself in tears on the way home. Of course it was sadness over the friends and family we had to say goodbye to before returning home.

But it was also the fact that just about everywhere that’s not southern California has way more trees.

The concrete just got to me is all.

The sad house is City Steph:

But here’s what happens when you put Steph in the country:

I was telling Josh about this book when he got home from work one day, and he said “Wait, wasn’t that a Disney cartoon?”

“WHAT??!”

So he looked it up and made me watch it.

Spoiler alert it made me cry.