It’s no secret that I have a hardcore love of children’s books, right? It’s a borderline obsession made less weird by the fact that I have two small children. But, the truth? My love for them would still be pretty freaking mighty with or without kids (check out this free printable of 30 of my favorites).

I also have a strange love of getting glimpses into the processes that go into creating things. It’s one thing to look at and appreciate a final product, but I think you understand it so much better when you get a good look at how it came to be. I thought it would be really fun to take a behind the scenes look at how one illustrator brought her kids book to life.

Brianna Baker is here to walk us through the process of putting together her children’s book, The Lion.

These 11 Earth Day books for kids are the perfect tools for reaching your children to be kind to the environment. With themes like recycling, activism, and the beauty of nature, these stories encourage kids to love our planet and to think twice about how their actions might affect the environment.

“Can’t you just use a wipe?” I asked my seven-year-old, who was reaching for a too-high towel to clean up her mess while I was in the middle of cleaning up a different mess.

“No,” she said, with a lot of confidence for someone who was talking to a mother in the middle of so many messes. “They’re not reusable and that’s bad for the environment.”

I stared at her for a second, a tiny bit awestruck, before dropping everything and helping her get the towel. Score one for the mess maker. And score one for mom too, while we’re at it. Moments like this one are what make me realize that all of the behaviors I try to model do seep into those little brains. They see it over and over and over again until they’re doing it too.

It also helps to read stories that enforce what I’m trying to teach them. Instead of just rolling their eyes at another Life Lesson from Mom, my girls suddenly see that I’m not the only one who thinks or feels or acts a certain way.

These 11 books are perfect for Earth Day, but they’re also perfect for raising eco-conscious humans who think twice about their impact on the environment.

I don’t know what your house is like, but our house is mighty opinionated (especially the ladies in it, who happen to outnumber our lone male 3 to 1). If there’s something we can debate each other on, we will. And very often we all have different opinions.

When it comes to books though, we can all agree on one thing: our favorites are constantly changing. Sometimes it changes by the week or the month (we’ve had impossibly long stretches of reading the same exact book every single night—I’m talking to you Won’t You Be My Kissaroo? and you too Fancy Nancy). Sometimes it changes by the day.

Right now our favorites all happen to be what I consider classics (which means there is nary a Dora or Barbie or Disney Princess in sight—thank the friggin lord), so I thought I’d feature each of our current favorites and see if you guys love them too.

As Samantha gets older (how is she in third grade already?!), her interest in books is obviously changing. Gone are the days when we would curl up in her bed and read Won’t You Be MyKisaroo? every. single. night. Still, I plan to curl up and read to her every night until she finds it unbearable—which means we’ve changed things up a bit.

Instead of reading books below her reading level, we’ve moved on to books that are at or above it. It’s been fun to introduce her to Nancy Drew and The Babysitter’s Club and other classics I read when I was younger. And it’s also been fun to discover new books that we’re both reading for the first time.

I’ve decided to round up some of our current favorites to share with you guys. Because they’re awesome.

I’m not going to lie to you. When Ellie first strolled up to me with one of these little Les Petits Fairytales board books in her chunky little hands, I turned my nose up. Girlfriend is three years old, which feels a little too old for books with pages that have just a word or two on them—especially since she regularly sits through full-length picture books.

Still, she was excited to recognize Rapunzel on the cover since she’s been obsessed with Tangled lately. So I let her bring it up into the cafe at Barnes and Noble while we read some books and the girls split a cookie.

I almost spit out my coffee when we sat down and she proceeded to turn through the book and tell the whole story of Rapunzel. As Samantha and I read a few other books, Ellie stayed focused on Rapunzel. She retold the story again and again with a few extra details here and there as she noticed different details in the pictures.

That’s when I stepped back and wondered Who the hell am I? Who am I to tell her she’s too old for something she’s excited about?