Bookshelf #7:
Clarke
4 years old
Los Angeles, CA, USA

My husband built and painted this bookshelf to Clarke’s specifications. It had to “look like a zebra.” Currently, Clarke especially enjoys reading Mo Willems’s Elephant & Piggie series, as well as the Dr. Seuss “Beginner Books.”

Submitted by: Candace
http://www.bookbookerbookest.blogspot.com

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf, click here.

Bookshelf #6:
Albin
12 years old
Stockholm, Sweden

This bookshelf belongs to Albin, who is 12 years old. As you can see, Japanese manga is a favourite… But also Cressida Cowell, Cornelia Funke and J.K. Rowling, as well as Swedish writers like Niklas Krog. Since I work in a library I don’t buy a lot of books for my children – we borrow them at the library instead. When I asked him which book he likes the best he thought about it quite a while and then said it was Airman by Eoin Colfer.

Submitted by: Anna G. Chen

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf, click here.

Bookshelf #5:
Pranav
6 years old
Bangalore, India

Submitted by: Anandhi Yagnaraman

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf, click here.

Bookshelf #4:
Morgan and Alastrin
3 years old and 2 years old
Windsor, Ontario, Canada

This is a photo of my two girls’ bookshelf. We own more kids’ books than that, though. Some are in the living room, for easy access; others they aren’t quite big enough for yet, are upstairs in storage; and the seasonal books (Christmas, Easter, Halloween) are also stored upstairs, and only brought out during the season they’re about. My girls love reading books and will go in there and “read” for a good 20 minutes on their own!

Submitted by: Callista/Kathleen

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf, click here.

Bookshelf #3:
Shashank
5 years old
Bangalore, India

Most of the books in Shashank’s shelf are in English and Kannada.

Submitted by: Prashanth Patali

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf, click here.

Bookshelf #2:
Cherie
3 1/2 years old
Delhi, India

Here is our bookshelf. It’s actually not a shelf, but a couple of drawers salvaged from a termite- ridden dresser, lined up on the floor for easy access. We used to have them in a cabinet, but our last major haul was temporarily piled up here, while we played at having a book fair at our house. I found that this was much easier to use and encouraged more reading, as it was actually in the playing area, so I let it be, and arranged a little sitting space around it. As you see, we started painting them, and then the project got shelved The background shows the latest artwork, and a couple of Rajasthani puppets we picked up recently. And that is my little one ‘reading’ a favourite (on account of its various pull-out sections).

The books we have, with a few exceptions, are totally dependent on what was available at the book fairs we attended last year, and at bargains, rather than our choice. But they all have nice pics to look at, so that is alright. Mostly fiction, a few small encyclopedias and even fewer science books. Of course I want more of these books, but now I am also looking for biographies, science, math and discovery/invention books.

Submitted by: Swati
http://hellonetbaby.blogspot.com

For details on how to submit a photo of your child’s bookshelf, click here.

Here’s a picture of my seven-year-old daughter’s bookshelf… The top shelf houses her books in Portuguese; the two bottom ones hold books in English from all over the world. She’s a lucky girl, no doubt. And—blame me and PaperTigers—that doesn’t even cover her whole collection. There are children’s books scattered on the floor in every single room of the house… we just don’t have enough bookshelves to put them on! What a great problem to have…

So here’s the deal: whether your little one has too many or too few, in shelves or piles, tidy or scattered on the floor, please send us pictures of their books! Mail us a photo with your child’s first name, age, city and country, and we will post it here, as part of our “Around the World in 100 Bookshelves” project. Hopefully our combined photos will offer a glimpse of a big world made smaller through books and reading. Don’t worry about capturing the whole bookshelf/book collection in the photo. A partial image, along with a reading-related anecdote and/or a few lines describing the bookshelf’s content, should be enough to help us connect across languages and cultures.

Image specs:

.jpg format
450 pixels wide (anything larger will be reduced)
Photos should be e-mailed to this address.

We are hoping to feature bookshelves from all over, so please help us spread the word!