It’s hard to believe that the actor, comedian and writer Michael Ian Black, a founding member of the mainstay deadpan far-out sketch group The State as well as nearly every other meaningful funny thing in the last thirty years, has reached the advice- and letter-writing stage of his career. But he has. Black’s latest book, A Better Man: A Mostly Serious Letter to My Son, is a meditation on masculinity (and how to avoid its more pernicious forms.) “Traditional masculinity encourages strength, independence, fortitude. All good qualities,” he writes, “At the same time, though, it provides no outlets for our vulnerability. If we cannot allow ourselves vulnerability, how are we supposed to experience wonder, fear, tenderness?” Though the book is framed as a letter to his college-aged son Elijah, Black is also the father of a daughter, Ruth, and though they are both far past the reading to stages, here he remembers those books that brought them together as a family.

Below are Michael Ian Black’s favorite books for children, available to purchase individually or as a set.