favourite books for reading aloud to children ...

[girasol]

Depends on the age, of course... But I really enjoyed reading 'The Gruffalo', 'Where the Wild Things are' (already mentioned) and Pumpkin Soup when my son was younger.

He's now learning to read and likes Dr Seuss' The Complete Cat in the Hat, which has a velvety hard back cover I just love the feel of!

 

[girasol]

My favourite is the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Me too! I love it! Although I tried reading it to my son when he was 6 and he didn't quite get it. I read it when I was a bit older, around 8 or 9 I think...

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Most of the ones our kids love have been mentioned already - Each Peach Pear Plum, Where The Wild Things Are, We're Going On A Bear Hunt - they also like 'I Love You This Much' (we're on our third copy so far, ditto for Each Peach...)

 

[wayward bob]

"boggler boll!" said the baby one of my real faves from childhood, along with flat stanley, i must get round to getting copies of both.

most of ours have been mentioned. we love the gruffalo too, but i have an even softer spot for room on the broom. the baby who wouldn't go to bed is another that i know by heart and still gets me a bit choked up: "someone who was ever so weary but couldn't go to sleep until the baby did". and i could read the mousehole cat over and over but that's more the pics than the story.

one that's a real hit with my 2 year old is "the beast of monsieur racine" - we had it from the library when we were kids and my mum tracked down a second hand copy. it has the perfect balance of words and pictures, there's so many strange little things to spot in the pictures, and the rioting parisians are a hoot.

 

[pennimania]

Burglar Bill was a huge hit with us too!

And Not Now Bernard!


My kids all loved the Afie and Rosie books by Shirley Hughes , partly I think because the house in the book was very similar to the one we lived in at that time, and quite a lot of the drawings look like Hackney

My oldest son rediscovered 'Fox in Socks' by Dr Seuss quite recently - apparently it is hilarious when read aloud to a large group of youths when you are slightly stoned.

 

[lizzieloo]

Just a short one but bloody brilliant.

Review here

 

[happytobe...]

I liked that book when I was little I think. However for some reason I found the fact they ran around naked downstairs and in the dough slightly scary....

I used to absoloutley love listening to 'the tiger who came to tea' on tape and I liked it when my dad read me the Dr seuss books,especially as I could often read parts too. Oh and my mum used to read me Winnie the Witch which was also a great book

Edited to add books that I had to list because they were fab to read/be read:

Not now bernard
Burglar bill
Just A Minute(or maybe it was 'In A Minute')
Nancy No size ( oh wow,that was a very good book)

I could go on and on and on. Memories.

 

[moomoo]

We're going on a bearhunt is our favourite - especially when all the children join in and it gets a bit noisy and silly

Just right for getting the little'un off to sleep

The Hungry Caterpiller
Alfie
I love you just the way you are
Mrs Smiths Crocodile

 

[Orang Utan]

The Shrinking Of Treehorn
and
Flat Stanley
are two others I remember fondly.

And Fattipuffs and Thinifers.

 

[foo]

god, there are so many! i love children's books, and i loved reading them to & with my sons when they were little.

i especially remember the ones about Meg & Mog, my eldest loved those. and there is one well-worn book knocking around our house called something like 'maybe it's a tiger' which my boys identified with because the protaginist was black. there were hardly any books with black or mixed race children when he was young. it's probably different now.

 

[milesy]

that's a wicked book. i loved it when i was little. although it was a bit... weird. i think it freaked me out a bit. and "were the wild things are" is excellent too

 

[Orang Utan]

and there is one well-worn book knocking around our house called something like 'maybe it's a tiger' which my boys identified with because the protaginist was black. there were hardly any books with black or mixed race children when he was young. it's probably different now.

I remember that - my younger brother and sister loved it too for the same reasons.

 

[foo]

I remember that - my younger brother and sister loved it too for the same reasons.

there was one more i found (this was in the 80s & 90s) about a mixed race girl and her family. the mum was white and the dad was black. my youngest son identified with the girl big time and would take it in his bag to school every day. i can't remember what it was called though...

i've still got all their childhood books, along with mine, in the loft. when my time for grandmotherhood comes, i'll get them out again.

 

[onenameshelley]

i forgot about funny bones which my little brother adored as well. Kids books today are great and in a way i cant wait to have little ones just so i can read to them like my parents did for us, i want my kids to love books as much as i did when i was little.

 

[Part 2]

A great list of books here. Loads of the stories I've enjoyed with my kids.

2 recent favourites in our house are

Sock Monkey Boogie Woogie and The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish

My eldest son had a book called Maths Curse which is excellent if your kid is one of those who is number mad too.

 

[Orang Utan]

there was one more i found (this was in the 80s & 90s) about a mixed race girl and her family. the mum was white and the dad was black. my youngest son identified with the girl big time and would take it in his bag to school every day. i can't remember what it was called though...

i've still got all their childhood books, along with mine, in the loft. when my time for grandmotherhood comes, i'll get them out again.

There was another one (I was a kid in the late 70s, early 80s) which I may just be getting confused with real life - a Topsy and Tim book in which they get a little brother who is black throught adoption. I'm all confused now.

 

[May Kasahara]

Lots of my faves already mentioned on this thread, but I would add my absolute favourite book when I was a kid, 'The Farthest-Away Mountain' by Lynne Reid Banks. Dakin is a forthright young girl who decides that she will be the first person to reach said mountain, and has lots of rather trippy adventures with magic snow, sad gargoyles and depressed frogs. Straightforward enough to keep young minds engaged, but also wonderfully dreamy and odd. Plus no one tells Dakin what to do, which is always appealing for a *ahem* headstrong kid.

 

[Orang Utan]

The Turbulent Term Of Tyke Tyler - great twist

 

[Greta]

Favourites in my household for under three are "Goodnight Moon" and "My Many Coloured Days". My toddlers will bring these to me and demand that they be read.

 

[ICB]

Loads

"Can't You Sleep Little Bear?" is particularly good for the wee ones, very cute and clever.

Shmu's been dominating bed time story for the older two by ploughing through the entire Lemony Snickett series so I'm going to get my revenge by going through all of Willard Price's Adventures when she's finished.

 

[mod]

Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis

 

[spanglechick]

I absolutely would not be read to after about three and a half, apparently, because i wanted to read to myself. (Literacy prodigy as a tot - lifelong underachiever ever since )

But I think I remember the first time I heard The Velveteen Rabbit it was read to me by my Mum. That's a brilliant, brillaint book.

I loved reading Green Eggs and Ham to my sister's kids when they were toddlers.

 

[oi2002]

Obviously Revelation closely followed by Psalms.

 

[Alan Hunt]

Favourites in my household for under three are "Goodnight Moon" and "My Many Coloured Days". My toddlers will bring these to me and demand that they be read.

A friend of my wife visited on the weekend and gave Goodnight Moon to my daughter. I've never read it before, but it strikes me as a book that really has been developed to appeal to the special state of mind of very young child. A lot of the more second-rate writers for toddlers and infants seem to think that all they have to do is have lots of repetition and keep any story really simple (They all seem to be about various types of cute creatures trying to make friends) But "Goodnight Moon" feels surreal but in a very considered way, like the writer made a real informed effort to reproduce the way very small children might perceive the world.

There's one page that says simply "Goodnight Nobody". My wife found this kind of disturbing, which I can understand, but I think that might be because the line is saying something really profound, something that would have probably made sense to me once, but it's a kind of sense that I've forgotten about now that I've grown up. A guess that sums up why I liked it so much- it seems like a really simple book, but it has something important to say about how we experience reality. And it makes me want to go to sleep.

Thanks for the other recomendations.

 

[oicur0t]

I often read to a roomfull of urbanites the following books;

The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business,
The Pig of Happiness, or
A Lovely Love Story.

Sadly the audience aren't children, but the books are for children. What gives eh?

I was reminded of The Tiger Who Came to Tea yesterday, a book I remember from childhood.

 

[onenameshelley]

I often read to a roomfull of urbanites the following books;

The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business,
The Pig of Happiness, or
A Lovely Love Story.

Sadly the audience aren't children, but the books are for children. What gives eh?

I was reminded of The Tiger Who Came to Tea yesterday, a book I remember from childhood.

It was great it was like having a proper story time.

 

[trabuquera]

Yet another vote for WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.
(oh and ps - it's "Let the wild rumpus BEGIN...." )

Also Cat in the Hat & Green Eggs and Ham.

I too was completely traumatised by STRUWWELPETER, but because of the pictures rather than the words. Amazing what the Victorians / the Germans considered suitable moral material for children ... I still have nightmares about having fingers chopped off with scissors, and it's down to that book rather than any number of yakuza movies seen since...
I was SO afraid of that book that i had to hide it in the airing cupboard, behind the boiler, to neutralise its evil vibes...

 

[hippogriff]

Peace at Last by Jill Murphy was always in demand when the kids were littlies, but that was so long ago it's taken me 24 hours to remember the title ....

 

[Louloubelle]

The Land of Green Ginger
1st edition of course*
read with a camp kenneth williams voice


* if you find one in good nick in a charideee shop I'll give you a tenner for it

 

[brixtonvilla]

I'd quit my job if I couldn't read children stories...

Ones my class have loved:

The Twits, or the BFG, by Roald Dahl - 'nuff said.
A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket - such a strong authorial presence, makes it an awful lot of fun to read aloud.
There's a boy in the girl's bathroom, by Louis Sachar. My class absolutely loved Bradley Chalkers.
Thief by Malorie Blackman - she's fantastic at leaving you on cliffhangers - great for that "Awwwww...." as you shut the book and say "more tomorrow".