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Posted November 6, 2008 by Audrey Turcot

Have you ever read to your kids, say, your favorite Ramona the Great story or giggled with them over the same Richard Scarry passages that made you laugh when you were their age? Isn’t that the best? To share what you loved and gauge their interest, and wonder whether they, in turn, will do the same with their kids.

Because I work in the entertainment arena, sometimes I wonder which books made a difference to famous people and whether they share them with their kids. After doing some digging, it turns out that when it comes to kids’ fare, the rich and famous have bookshelves that look a lot like yours, mine and, dare I say, Joe the Plumber’s!

Meredith Vieira and her daughter Lily adore Kay Thompson's Eloise at the Plaza. "I loved Eloise, for everything she wasn’t. She wasn’t pretty, she wasn’t the model child -- she was a little devil, and I envied her spunk. I grew up in a typical suburban home and wanted to live in the Plaza Hotel!" the Today show host told Parents magazine.

Rob Lowe’s favorite book as a kid was Beverly Cleary’s The Mouse and the Motorcycle and he loves reading it to his boys Matthew and John Owen. And, Stephen Colbert loved The Swiss Family Robinson so much that as a kid he read it under the covers with a flashlight. (Can’t you just picture him doing that?)

And, while many of us would probably place her books atop our tween/teen list, Judy Blume says that her all-time favorite kids’ books are the Madeline series by Ludwig Bemelman.

Food guru Giada De Laurentiis told the Today show that she reads Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight, Moon to her daughter because it means a lot to her. "My grandmother was the first person to tell me stories about the moon. We used to call her ‘Nonna Luna,’ which means ‘grandmother moon’ in Italian. So I think it’s appropriate for my daughter, because it’s a way for me to tell her about her great-grandmother!" Hillary Clinton is also a big fan of Moon while hubby Bill prefers the Dick and Jane Readers. (Not surprisingly, VP Dick Cheney sites Johnny Tremain as his seminal read.)

Savvy Sarah Jessica Parker revealed to People that For Every Child, A Better World has become a must-read at her house. "It’s the cold hard facts [about world poverty]. We’ve read it every night for weeks, and [son, James Wilke] still asks, ‘Why don’t those children have what they need?’ Because he lives in a country where clean water and food are at arm’s length, it’s hard for him to internalize why they aren’t available to everyone."

Not surprisingly, Dr. Seuss can count legions of fans from various walks including Mariska Hargitay, Jim Carrey, Troy Aikman, Jamie Fox, Sarah McLachlan, Janet Jacskson, Faith Hill, Will Smith, and Michael Douglas who particularly enjoys Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Author Maurice Sendak’s fave is The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald while his very own Where the Wild Things Are is named by Cuba Gooding Jr., Gossip Girl’s Taylor Momsen and a slew of Miss America winners as their favorite.

As much as we would love to be a fly on the wall and listen to these famed folk reading aloud to their kidlets we know we can't.  But we can do the next best thing.  There's a cool site called storylineonline.com that features dozens of celebs like Jason Alexander, Wilmer Valderama, Elijah Wood, Jane Kaczmarek and many more, reading one of their favorite books for you and your kids’ listening enjoyment.

Very cool.