For reading time today, my daughter picked out Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth. This book originally came out in 2005 and I remember seeing it at the bookstore but it never caught her eye until recently.

Imagine what happens when a panda bear by the name of Stillwater becomes your neighbor. Michael, Karl and Addy get to know their neighbor through the short “zen” like stories he shares with them.

The book is beautifully illustrated and filled with life-long lessons for everyday life, such as not carrying around anger or how to be thankful for what you have. This book would be great for boys or girls ages 4-7. It’s also “adult friendly” in that it was interesting to read to my daughter and was not repetitive at all. It flowed quite nicely. It would make a really nice gift.

On a side note… some of the pages would be beautiful framed. When I had my kids I had grandiose ideas of framing favorite pages from books to hang in their nursery. Wouldn’t that be cool? I never got around to doing it but this book would be good for that.