16 Books That Transformed My Work With Young Children

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one. ~George R.R. Martin. What will you do with your summer? It's what our teachers always asked us as the school year wound down. As professional educators, many of us get to ask ourselves the same question.My answer then, as it is now, is read.Indeed, if I have one piece of advice for early childhood educators it's to read more books. Whole books. Education and development books, of course, but more importantly, books on any topic or by any person that sparks your interest.Unfortunately, our time is limited. Much of the reading we do as educators tends toward "professional reading" -- curriculum materials, lesson plans, assessment tools, policy documents. Sometimes we might take a look at the latest book on play-based learning. Most of us have a stack of books that we "need to" get to. But the bottomline is that this is all just functional reading, reading to solve problems and produce results,…