I [Heart] My Life

Our Read-Alouds Lately

It's been a long time since I posted about what books we are reading aloud to Nia, so I thought I'd try to catch up. I always love to hear what others are reading so be sure to leave a comment on what books you & your kiddos are enjoying these days.

• Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl - our version is one from Joe's childhood, published in 1978 and illustrated by Jill Bennett (most of the Dahl books are now illustrated by Quentin Blake). Bennett's illustrations are sweet and tender and accompany the story well. 
• The Moomintroll series by Tove Jannson -- here is a link to the first in the series
• The Cobble Street Cousins series by Cynthia Rylant -- here is a link to the first in the series. I picked these originally for their very sweet pencil illustrations but found the stories equally as sweet and entertaining. 
• The Mercy Watson series by Kate DiCamillo -- here is a link to the first in the series.
• The Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne -- here is a link to the first in the series. I read a handful of these and while I think the storyline is clever and really captures children's imaginations, I found reading them myself to be boring and tedious. So after reading a few, we checked some more out of the library on CD. They are good audio books, read by the author.
• The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner -- here is a link to the first in the series. This is one of those series that has 100+ books in it. I think have read the first 12 to Nia. The first book was our absolute favorite, but many in the 12 we read were good. I think the illustrations in the first are the best, and then are pretty lacking after that. That is my only complaint. 
• Beatrix Potter The Complete Tails by Beatrix Potter
• Stuart Little by E.B. White

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As always, we are doing lots of reading around here. With suggestions from The Read-Aloud Handbook, we have been plowing our way through a bunch of short chapter books lately. These are designed for younger children and so have some illustrations.

I've read each of these aloud to Nia at least three times each, so I feel very confident in recommending them.

My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett is a great book for the 3-going-on-4/newly-4 set because it has a lot of adventure without anything really scary or overly dramatic. Elmer Elevator is eleven years old. After bringing home a stray cat who tells him about a place called Wild Island, Elmer sets off to rescue a baby dragon named Boris who is being held captive by the wild animals of Wild Island. Elmer backs in his backpack many strange items that end up coming in very handy on Wild Island when he outsmarts the fierce animals. The book is a three-in-one, with two sequels included: Elmer & the Dragon, and The Dragons of Blueland. (The book starts with a map -- don't you find that these are often the best books?)

The Water Horse by Dick King-Smith is a little more advanced than My Father's Dragon but held Nia's attention equally well. This is a historical fiction about the possible origins of Nessy, the Loch Ness Monster. Eight-year-old Kristie finds a strange egg on the beach near her Scottish home, so she brings it home and she and her brother hatch a baby sea monster in the bathtub. The children's grandfather helps them care for the "water horse" which soon outgrows the backyard pond they put it in. This book starts off a little slowly with a lot of big words describing a storm, but stick with it; it gets much easier to read very quickly.

Two Times the Fun by Beverly Cleary is about 4-year-old twins, Jimmy and Janet. It is a very simply written book, with 4 stories broken into 4 chapters. I didn't enjoy this book as much as some others we've read that are a little more complex, but Nia seemed to really enjoy it, especially the last chapter in which the twins transition from their toddler beds to "big kid" beds.

Mimmy & Sophie: All Around Town by Miriam Cohen is a great book. It is actually the second in a series -- the first is a picture book with chapters, while this one is more of an easy-reader style with illustrations. Both are good books. Mimmy and Sophie are sisters, growing up in Brooklyn during the Depression. Sophie is really into dolls while Mimmy is interested in cars. I liked that with this series Nia got a glimpse of growing up in a different time with a lot less than we have now.

The Stories Julian Tells by Ann Cameron is another great book. Julian has a big imagination and often tells his little brother Huey tall tales -- which occasionally get him in some trouble. It is interesting to read how he gets out of the trouble with help from his father. I also liked that the subjects of the chapters were a little different from some of the other books we'd read in the easy-reader style, but closely mirrored events Nia could actually relate to: cooking, gardening, cats, fig trees, making new friends... Well-written with beautiful illustrations.

Rip-Roaring Russell by Johanna Hurwitz is kind of similar to Two Times the Fun: Not necessarily my favorite, but Nia really liked it because it was about a 4 year old who was just starting preschool. So the subject matter was perfect for us. Something I did like about this book: Sometimes Russell was disappointed and that's just the way it was -- the chapters didn't necessarily always end with everything magically working out, the way things often are in other books.

And we completed the Poppy series by Avi with Poppy and Ereth. This was a very well done conclusion to a long series with many well-loved characters. This whole series is much more complex than the other books in this post. You might want to preview it before you launch into it with your child. As I've mentioned on this blog before, we started with Poppy and did some light editing on page 2, but other than that, we've read them all all the way through and Nia hung on every word. But I think she will also enjoy re-reading them for years to come as she matures. With Poppy & Ereth, I thought Avi did a wonderful job of enabling the reader to say good-bye to the characters without it being too overly sad. I can't recommend the whole series enough. The illustrations by Brian Floca are worth it alone.

 

What We're Reading Now

It's not always easy to pick a winner when it comes to childrens books. Some are just plain boring, others are inane. And then there are some that I think will be great, but they don't hold Nia's interest at all. Other times, it turns out she's not mature enough. Two such titles in the latter category: Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid and Margery Williams' The Velveteen Rabbit. Both started out really well with lots of enthusiasm from Nia and myself (both were finely written and a pleasure to read aloud). But before long, with tears in her eyes, Nia said, "I'm not old enough for this book yet."

In The Little Mermaid, it was because of the wicked witch who grants the little mermaid's wish for legs -- the price for those legs was pain each time she walked, death if the prince didn't love her in return, and also the witch took her voice. The loss of the little mermaid's voice was the most upsetting to Nia.

In The Velveteen Rabbit, the part that disturbed her was the notion that stuffed animals can be loved so much that they become shabby and their whiskers may fall off and their button eyes may loose their shine and their bodies may loose their shape. This made her really cry. Oops! Ok, we'll come back to those.

So, here's what we are reading successfully. It's not all cancer books around here anymore, though it's still a mix of picture books and (age-appropriate) novels. We do the picture books during the day, but at night I prefer the chapter books with fewer pictures (I find that pictures are stimulating and, let's be honest, part of the idea of bedtime reading is to lull them to sleep, right?).

So for bedtime, we've been reading the Poppy series by Avi. Pam stared the series with Nia by reading Poppy and Ragweed. Then I read Poppy & Rye and Ereth's Birthday. Now we are in the midst of Poppy Returns, with one more book to go, Poppy & Ereth. Although Ragweed is technically the start of the series, it was recommended to us to start with Poppy and to lightly edit the second page (in which the character Ragweed is killed by the story's villian, an owl named Mr. Ocax). I like the series because Poppy the mouse is a wonderfully clever and creative heroine who is always helping others out of scrapes, first as a teenage mouse and later as a mother, and the stories gently bring up issues of friendship, family, death, & survival.

They are illustrated very well, but the illustrations are not on every page, so Nia can lay back and listen and begin the creative process of picturing the story in her head (or drifting off to sleep!). (Though I should add, I do understand it is an important pre-reading skill to be able to link the words to the pictures, too.)

We recently read another short-novel series of books that begins with Toys Go Out by Emily Jenkins. This one is about a collection of toys and their adventures when the people of the house are away. The toys -- a stuffed buffalo, a stuffed sting ray and a rubber ball -- grapple with issues of friendship, problem-solving, loyalty, making new friends, and overcoming fears. Like the Poppy books, this series is lightly illustrated with only one or two pictures per chapter.

A few months ago, Nia started asking lots of questions about how babies were made and where they grow and how they are born. After fumbling our way through some pretty awkward explainations, Joe brought home this book from the libary:

It's Not the Stork is a well-done book, touching on all the topics Nia was asking about without too much information that might scare her. But the authors also don't shy away from the anatomy and the book does talk very simply about "a special kind of loving called sex."

I like that the book mentions that some babies are born at home with a midwife, and it talks about both bottle-feeding and breastfeeding.

Other books we're enjoying include the Little House series that is designed for preschoolers and young readers, My First Little House Books, adapted from Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Beautiful, simple, feel-good stories of 2 little girls and their infant sister growing up long ago, first in the Big Woods and later on the Prairie. I love the full-page illustrations in these books.

And we are also enjoying several versions of the Stone Soup folktale. I think this one is Joe's favorite; he and Nia have read it each night this week:

PS. After I wrote this post, Joe came home from the library with two more stone soup books! He's on to something with this stone soup repetition. The kindergarten teacher Steve Spitalny once told me at a workshop that you know a book or story has struck a chord when the child starts acting out the story in their play. He tells the same story to his kindergartners each day for weeks at a time! This week, Nia's been making stone soup in her kitchen.