Are there are educational picture books for pre-schoolers?

[lisaannne]

There are lots of great picture books out there, but apart from counting, none of them I can find seem to make any attempt to be educational. Does anyone know of any?

All books are educational.

Where you looking for something in particular?

There is a website called history-for-kids.com that has lots of fun poems, written in the style of Julia Donaldson, Giles Andreae, etc. The stories are all true stories from history or myths/legends - e.g. Lady Godiva, Florence Nightingale, King Canute, Robin Hood.

My favourites are
Mythical Creatures
and
George Washington

What do you mean by educational?

Agree with BTF - you can talk about and discuss almost any picture book, and hey presto. It's Educational!

Or do you mean non-fiction?

We got a lot of value out of this book. From first 'oh here's a page of pretty pictures' to 'why do porcupines have spikes'. My DDs favourite book for ages.

Thanks everyone. To clarify, I was thinking of something like countries of the world, (very) basic science, famous people, that sort of thing - I just get fed up reading about teddies who are scared of the dark.

Thanks JLAD, that history site is good. I will print a few off.

Ahh, I see! Well, in that case, I highly recommend Ladybird books. My local Oxfam bookshop always has loads in stock. DS has got some about colours, opposites, trains and I've seen vintage ones about famous people.
Topsy and Tim are pretty good for "first experience" type stuff, for example, I bought "Topsy and Tim go to hospital" when DS had to go into hospital and it was really good for starting discussions about what doctors and nurses do, what Xrays are etc.

We get books out from the library which are non-fiction readers for school-age children, the pictures are interesting enough and the language is simple enough. DK is obviously a classic publisher for this kind of thing.

Not sure what age you are at but some of the books by Robert E. Wells are good - children's non-fiction in picture book style. I especially like 'Is a blue whale the biggest thing there is'