Parents of young kids: Who are your favorite authors for reading to your young kids? I have a soon-to-be 4 year old who loves books and I'm always looking for new ideas. I'll start off with a few of her favorite authors, with a good title from each (not in rank order).

Alice and Martin Provensen - Our Animal Friends on Maple Hill Farm
Julia Donaldson - Room on the Broom
Kaya Doi - Chirri and Chirra
Margaret Mahy - Dashing Dog
Anne Hunter - Possum's Harvest Moon
Paul Goble - The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses

I'll single out the Chirri and Chirra books with an explanation because they're very different from the others. They are translated from Japanese, and despite having super simple plot lines, the drawings are a lot of fun and a wonderful complement to the text.

They can be modern or classic (or modern classic:), in any language. Preferably famous and influential authors, but hidden gems are also fine.

Also, I'd really prefer fiction, but philosophical books are all right too.

I eventually recommend Neil Postman's writing to anyone I can. These books are absolutely fantastic, especially Technopoly, though I'd also recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death and The End of Education (pun in the title intended).

One of Neil Postman's big contributions to how I think was by explaining an extended notion of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Instead of trying to insist that different human languages have different ways of communication, Neil Postman makes the assertion that different media, books, oral communication, TV, radio, the internet, have world-views embedded into them. So, you will (almost) never find a serious philosophical discussion in a film. Books, being linear can afford to give a cursory examination, and the person reading can follow at their own pace, while film can't do that. However, films are better at communicating emotion, so the stories in film are more experience/emotion/in-the-moment driven. Postman's argument was better, so ignore the weaknesses in my summary. I'm just trying to give some flavor to the type of things he wrote, like he also predicted how people would communicate on the internet.

The thing which really stands out to me is how Neil Postman was just a good thinker. He wasn't a one hit wonder for ideas. I'd be willing to read his thoughts on just about anything, even if I disagree. So anyway, read him! You won't have any regerts.