What does a pigeon say?

I have no idea what the *real* answer to this question is, but in our house, it's "Not tired!"  This is due to one of Pooh's favorite books, "Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late" by Mo Willems.

I'm a big fan of the pigeon books, which i was introduced to by a dear friend in grad school, who had "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" - it was a great book!

Now, this one is one of Pooh's favorites too - if you haven't read it, suffice it to say that it's bedtime, and the pigeon is not ready to go to bed.  He tries to come up with all kinds of alternate activities, all the time insisting, "I'm not tired!" We happened to first read this book when Pooh was learning animal sounds - he's got a lot of cute ones, including "wibit" for a frog and an adorable fishface.  But the pigeon, well, it's just so darn cute that it's a landslide favorite.

But this leads to the real question I've been pondering:  what are some good, easily read books for young kids?  Like I said, I love the pigeon books, and I've been a fan of Mercer Mayer's Little Monster and Little Critter books for many many years, but I'm at a bit of a loss otherwise.  As a matter of fact, we've started a book recycling bin, in which we drop all the books that we think are probably not ones that we want to read all the time in the house.  Most of the time, books get dropped in because the writing is atrocious, but then there's the one called "We Help Daddy" that's all about the kids helping daddy with manly tasks while mommy cooks and cleans - we don't want Pooh thinking that's what a family really looks like, or he's gonna start questioning why mommy goes off to work everyday while daddy stays home...

I'll admit that it was hard for me to accept the idea of the book recycling bin because it's hard for me to throw books away, even bad ones, but now we are on a quest to find some cool project for the recycled books.  How about a library desk like this one?  We might have to start being much more selective of the books we keep if we want one of those!