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Norman Bridwell's enormous red dog and Emily Elizabeth, the girl who loved him — a 1963 picture book that Scholastic never stopped handing to schoolchildren, and whose star became the company's official mascot. He was very nearly named Tiny.
The most beautiful fish in the ocean, covered in real foil-stamped scales that shimmered under the classroom lights — every copy had them, not just fancy editions. Marcus Pfister's 1992 Swiss import sold over 30 million copies in 50 languages, and kids mostly just wanted to touch the sparkle.
The die-cut classic where you poked your finger through the holes a caterpillar ate in the pages. Eric Carle's 1969 collage masterpiece was already decades old by the 90s, but that's when it was simply everywhere childhood was — classroom shelves, library carts, butterfly units — capped by a 1993 animated adaptation that landed on American VHS in 1995.