1

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle

Image: rbu1249

A must to start off this list: The visuals of The Very Hungry Caterpillar are ingrained in the upbringing of millions of kids throughout the country —and the world!

Eric Carle wrote and illustrated the story of a bug eating through several foods before transforming into a butterfly. Who could forget the tactile experience of finding different holes in the pages?

2

"Corduroy" by Don Freeman

Image: Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto

In the world of children’s literature, Corduroy is a tear-jerker. A teddy bear sits on a store shelf hoping a kid will pick him. Little Lisa spots him but can’t afford him, and leaves. So the bear embarks on a quest to fix his missing button, hoping this will make him more likable.

In the end, Lisa comes back and buys him as he is —because, of course, he was always enough . Is there a sweeter story to teach kids about self-acceptance and love?

3

"Make Way for Ducklings" by Robert McCloskey

Image: David Trinks

A row of bronze statues in Boston’s Public Garden celebrates Make Way for Ducklings, the sweet book by illustrator and author Robert McCloskey.

He got the idea for this story when he observed ducks causing traffic issues on Beacon Street. The book follows Mr. and Mrs. Mallard as they search for the perfect place to raise their family —ducklings Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack. They finally settle, of course, in the lagoon of the Boston Public Garden.

4

"Charlotte's Web" by E.B. White

Image: Annie Spratt

Author E.B. White had a farm in Maine, and his daily observations of barnyard animals gave him an idea: What if a pig and a spider became best friends?

In the book, the spider weaves messages to convince humans that Wilbur is an extraordinary pig and should not be slaughtered. Charlotte’s Web brushes on themes like mortality and loss —certainly bold for a children’s book. Nonetheless, it became a timeless classic.

5

"The Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss

Image: Franco Monsalvo

"Thing One" and "Thing Two" have to be among the longest-standing Halloween costumes in use. They were born thanks to Dr. Seuss’ famous The Cat in the Hat in the 50s, and every kid still seems to know its iconic characters.

The story shows a day in the life of two kids left home alone when a whimsical magical cat shows up to unleash some fun chaos. The author said that he wrote the book as a response to an article in Life Magazine that lamented the dullness of children’s primers.

6

"Frog and Toad Are Friends" by Arnold Lobel

Image: Jared Evans

Images of Frog and Toad still abound on the internet, which proves how beloved and timeless the pair became. Frog and Toad Are Friends was published in 1970 as the first in Arnold Lobel's famous series.

The wholesome dialogue, tender narratives, and classic illustrations left a lasting mark on generations of readers. Who could forget the simplicity of these two loyal friends riding a bike, flying a kite, or fishing from a boat?

7

"Goodnight Moon" by Margaret Wise Brown

Image: David_Miram

We couldn’t leave Goodnight Moon out of this list! Margaret Wise Brown wrote over 100 children’s books, but this one won the hearts of little readers and their parents.

It’s a bedtime story about a young bunny saying goodnight to everything around him , from "the great green room" to "the quiet old lady whispering ‘hush’." It shows an appeasing and sweet ritual that taught kids about routines through soothing rhymes.

8

"Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak

Image: Adnan Uddin

In Where the Wild Things Are, mischievous young Max escapes into a vivid fantasy world after being sent to his room without dinner. There, he crosses a land of endearing monsters whom he leads as their king.

Maurice Sendak’s story and iconic illustrations captivated many generations of readers. The text was adapted into short films, a live-action film, and even an opera!

9

"Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle

Image: Daniel Diesenreither

Remember Eric Carle, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar ? Before that big hit, he had been the illustrator for another unforgettable kid’s book: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

This one was written by Bill Martin Jr. The rhyming question-response structure introduces readers to a series of animals described by their vibrant colors : a brown bear, a red bird, a yellow duck, and so on.

10

"The Phantom Tollbooth" by Norton Juster

Image: Jon Tyson

Maurice Sendak, the author of Where the Wild Things Are​ , said that The Phantom Tollbooth was a masterpiece.

This 1960s book by Norton Juster follows Milo, a bored young boy who unexpectedly receives a mysterious tollbooth that allows him to travel through fantastical lands. Juster said that the idea for this book was sparked from a random encounter with a curious child asking about infinity.

1

Levi Strauss

Image: Eric Prouzet

Although his name will forever be associated with American business pioneers, Levi Strauss was not born in the United States. That's right! The inventor of the iconic blue jeans was born in Bavaria, Germany, in 1829. In 1847, he came to America along with his siblings in search of new opportunities, settling in New York. Eventually, he moved to San Francisco, where his famous company would be founded.

2

Irving Berlin

Image: Sandra Grünewald

While he can be considered one of the most American of Americans, Irving Berlin was actually born in Russia. That's right; the legendary composer and lyricist was born in 1888 in what was then the Russian Empire, and his family immigrated to the US when he was just a child. How lucky for us! Can you imagine life without classics like "White Christmas," "God Bless America," and "There's No Business Like Show Business"? Neither can we!

3

Alexander Graham Bell

Image: Carlos Eduardo

Although he became a naturalized US citizen in 1882, Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He arrived in the United States in 1871, where he worked as a teacher and researcher. It was in America, in 1876, that he made his most famous invention: the telephone.

4

Elizabeth Taylor

Image: Color Crescent

Elizabeth Taylor, our Cleopatra, wasn't born in the United States. As you probably know, she saw the world for the first time in England in 1932 and moved to America in 1939, just before World War II started. But here's an important detail: Her parents were American! So, she was a US citizen from birth; she just happened to be born overseas.

5

Alfred Hitchcock

Image: Usha Kiran

Yes, Alfred Hitchcock was born in England, but we probably wouldn't have had the pleasure of enjoying cinema classics like Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963) if he hadn't come to live and work in America. Although he was already a successful director in his home country, Hitchcock decided to come to the United States in 1939, drawn by the promise of Hollywood's growing film industry.

6

Audrey Hepburn

Image: Paige Johnson

Although she became an American citizen in the 1950s and won our hearts on the big screen, the legendary Audrey Hepburn was actually born in 1929 in Brussels, Belgium. In 1945, she settled in England, where she began taking ballet classes and started landing modeling and acting roles. Finally, in 1951, she came to America to star in the Broadway production of Gigi .

7

Isaac Asimov

Image: Phillip Glickman

Science fiction as we know it wouldn't be the same without the incredible work of Isaac Asimov. However, we may never have had the opportunity to enjoy his brilliant writing if his family hadn't immigrated to America. Asimov was born in 1920 in Petrovichi, Russia. His parents decided to move in 1923, just a year after the Soviet Union was established. At only 3 years old, he arrived in the US, and by the age of 8, he was a full American citizen.

8

Charles Chaplin

Image: Mimi Di Cianni

The unforgettable Charlie Chaplin was born in London in 1889. Before he turned 20, he arrived in the US as a young performer with a vaudeville company. Here, he found fame and became a global icon of silent film. Surprisingly, even after living and working here for over 40 years, he never officially became an American citizen, but Americans embraced him wholeheartedly all the same.

9

Albert Einstein

Image: WikiImages

Albert Einstein, one of the most famous scientists in the world, was born in Germany. And he chose to be American! He was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879, and later became a US citizen in 1940.

His first trip to America was in 1921, when he came to New York as a renowned scientist. Then, in 1933, he returned for good and accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where his former house still stands.

10

Joseph Pulitzer

Image: Jorien Loman

Joseph Pulitzer revolutionized the press in America and around the world, but before becoming a renowned US citizen, he lived in Hungary, the place where he was born in 1847. At the age of 17, he left Europe in search of greater opportunities and arrived in the US in 1864. Here, he went on to become a pioneering journalist and newspaper publisher, even giving his name to the prestigious awards honoring excellence in journalism and the arts.

1

Spanish

The fact that Spanish is the second most spoken language in the U.S. comes as no surprise if we consider that at least 18 of the current 50 states were once part of the Spanish Empire. This, combined with migration from other Hispanic territories, means that around 40 million people speak Spanish at home in the U.S., nearly 13% of the population.

Native Spanish speakers in the U.S. have developed their distinct dialectal variants, such as New Mexican Spanish in the states of New Mexico and Colorado, Puerto Rican Spanish , or Spanglish .

2

French

French is, after Spanish, the most taught foreign language in schools. But did you know that more than a million Americans speak French at home ? Historical events such as the Louisiana Purchase or the French and Indian War in Canada meant that native French speakers migrated to the U.S. or became American when French-speaking territories were incorporated.

Nowadays, the French language presents three main dialectal groups in the U.S. , mainly located in Louisiana and the New England region. So, if you were planning a holiday in NOLA or Lewiston, you might want to brush up on your ouis , bonjours , and mercis .

3

Navajo

Compared with other languages on this list, the Navajo speaker population might seem small, with around 170,000 native speakers . However, it is the most widely spoken Native American language , with most of its speakers located in the Southwestern U.S.

Navajo is famous for its use as a code during World War II . Its complex grammar and the fact that, at the time, it wasn’t a written language, significantly reduced the chances of enemy forces deciphering transmissions, and even native Navajo speakers wouldn’t have been able to understand the code used.

4

Chinese

When we think about Chinese immigration into the U.S., we sometimes forget that China is a multicultural, multiethnic country, and that not all Chinese immigrants spoke the same language or came from the same region.

It is reported that more than 3 million people in the U.S. speak a Chinese language at home, with Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hokkien accounting for the majority of those speakers.

5

German

Although more than a million Americans speak German at home , nearly half of them would have issues communicating with a German person. This is because there are several variants of German spoken in the U.S., such as the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Plautdietsch, or the Alsatian , mainly spoken by Amish or Mennonite communities, or the Yiddish , widely spoken in Jewish communities.

Standard German is the second most spoken language in North Dakota , while Texas German , a U.S. variant, is still spoken in the state of Texas by the descendants of 19th-century German settlers.

6

Hawaiian

Hawaiian is recognized as one of the official languages of the state of Hawaii , but is classified as an endangered language . It is estimated that only 2000 of its 30,000 speakers learned it as a first language. In the late 19th Century, Hawaiian was banned from schools , which significantly reduced the number of speakers, but conservation efforts over the past decades have proven successful in revitalizing the language .

Hawaiian Pidgin , an English-based creole language , is also spoken by more than half a million Hawaiians and has been influenced by languages such as Portuguese, Cantonese, Japanese, Okinawan, and Korean .

7

Italian

Italians are one of the most notorious U.S. communities of immigrant descent, with their way of speaking being one of the main traits associated with Italian-Americans . But nowadays, of the more than 15 million Italian-Americans, only 700,000 are fluent in standard Italian .

Many Americans of Italian descent speak a pidgin (a simplified language that results from the contact of two groups) that mixes English, standard Italian, and regional Italian dialects , with words like mootsarell’ (from mozzarella ), gabagool’ (from capocollo ), or latte (from caffelatte ). Something to think about next time someone orders a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks.

8

Vietnamese

You might not know this, but despite Vietnamese immigration being relatively recent compared to other Southeast Asian communities, Vietnamese is the sixth most spoken language in the U.S . This is a result of a conscious effort by the Vietnamese community to maintain the language and pass it down to new generations.

Before the start of the Vietnam War, it was estimated that only 3,000 people of Vietnamese descent lived in the U.S. Currently, around 2.3 million individuals identify as Vietnamese-American, 1.5 million of them being fluent speakers of the language .

9

American Sign Language (ASL)

When we say ‘languages other than English’, most of the time we are not thinking of sign languages . For many people, sign language is a variant of a spoken language, but sign languages have their own grammar, syntax, and rules that make them full-fledged languages.

It is estimated that American Sign Language (distinct and separate from the sign languages of some other anglophone countries) has between 250,000 to half a million native speakers , with thousands more as second-language users.

10

Arabic

The presence of the Arabic language in the U.S. dates back hundreds of years, with records of Arabic speakers from the 17th Century . Arab-Americans are estimated to be more than 3 million, of diverse backgrounds, with ties to at least 22 Arabic-speaking countries .

Following historic events in the past decades, many Arab-Americans have stopped using the language or teaching it to their children to avoid prejudice or stigma . Nonetheless, Arabic is still one of the most spoken languages at home for U.S. citizens , with more than a million users.