Children's books .... Suggestions?

[applepansy]

I love to read and my grandson is learning to love to read.

We read Pete the Cat, Splat the Cat, Dr. Suess, If You Give a Dog and Donut and her other books, If You Read to Me, I'll Read to You series, etc.

I am finding it difficult time wise but also physically to find books for my grandson. We spent an hour at the library. I first went through the two top shelves while standing and then went through the two bottom shelves on my knees. Afterwards I had trouble walking. Of the 15 books we checked out 3 of them I wish I handed bothered with. The time issue is reading each kids book before checking it out or buying it.

So..... I'm asking all the young parents in LDS.net-Land: What are your favorite children's books and which ones do your children like?

Thanks for your help. :)

[Backroads]

From my first grade teaching days, the big hits were the Elephant and Piggy books by Mo Willems (They are also great for learning to read.)

Other hits were "Once Upon a Motorcycle" "Rumplestiltkin's Daughter" and "The Great Fuzz Frenzy".

[Wingnut]

My daughter is in kindergarten, will be six in April, and loves to read. When she started this school year, she knew all her letters, and could write her name, her sister's name, "mommy," and "daddy." Now she loves reading and writing, and at our conference last week, told the teacher that she wanted to "read hard books." Her teacher showed us the level she was at, the level she'd been at at the beginning of the year, and where most of the class was expected to be, and said, "She is reading hard books."*

Some of our favorites (that she can mostly manage) are:

Caps For Sale

Little Critter books

Press Here, by Herve Tullet

A Wocket in My Pocket

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

The Cat in the Hat

*I don't say any of that by way of bragging, just because I know your grandson is a similar age, so to give some perspective.

[Connie]

Have you tried reading him chapter books over a longer period of time yet? Sometimes they go for that and sometimes not. Some good ones to try would be The Phantom Tollbooth, Charlotte's Web or anything by Roald Dahl.

Otherwise i would suggest getting a good collection of fairy tales. Some picture books my kids have liked are The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Monster at the End of this Book.

[Connie]

Here's some more:

Rumble in the Jungle and Commotion in the Ocean both by Giles Andreae

George Shrinks by William Joyce

Where the Wild Things Are

Weslandia

See Pip Point

Harold and the Purple Crayon

The House at Pooh Corner and Winnie the Pooh both by A.A. Milne

[Wingnut]

Have you tried reading him chapter books over a longer period of time yet? Sometimes they go for that and sometimes not. Some good ones to try would be The Phantom Tollbooth, Charlotte's Web or anything by Roald Dahl.

Great idea! My daughter and I have already worked through The Wizard of Oz, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Heidi. Dalmatian Press has a line of adapted classics that I love for this. I've found them in Target's $1 spot sometimes, though they're available online as well. We do a chapter (sometimes less) at bedtime. At the end of the book, we watch the movie together.

Otherwise i would suggest getting a good collection of fairy tales. Some picture books my kids have liked are The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Monster at the End of this Book.

Monster was always one of my favorites as a kid. :)

[Guest]

My kids' favorite series at that age:

1.) Thomas the Tank Engine

2.) Diego's Adventures (Dora's Cousin)

3.) Star Wars (Beginning Readers series - e.g. Clone Wars and Adventures in Hyperspace)

4.) Dr. Seuss

5.) Magic Schoolbus

6.) Ask Me (kid's encyclopedia set)

7.) A bunch of dinosaur and reptile picture books and book puzzles and reading game things.

Each of these have a jillion books in the series.

Note, they didn't read these by themselves at that age. It's either I read to them or we read together. Usually, I read the words while pointing at it with my finger, and they look at the pictures. But they love these stories. And what I found is that boys are very interested in facts and such - like encyclopedias. Like - in the Ask Me series - some book titles are "Do Rivers Ever End?", "Do Plants Eat Meat?", "Can Astronauts See Me?"... and man, they lap those books up! They want to know the answer! And dinosaur and reptile factoid books - they got a jillion of them. They even pick out the adult-audience books just because it is full of amazing dinosaurs, snake and lizard pictures.

The trick to getting them interested in reading is reading something they're interested in - Thomas, Diego, Star Wars, etc... for my kids. Other kids have different interests. Our library has a kid's area. When we go there, I go sit in the bean bag with my own book. The kids go scour the shelves and pick out what they want.

Edited February 26, 2014 by anatess

[Lakumi]

I always wanted to write children's books, I certainly wasn't satisfied with them as a child, I remember being read Moby **** when I was quite small (around 7) reading myself Grimm's Fairy Tails, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Call of Cthulhu...

I tried sharing my similar taste with my younger cousins (many moons ago) but for some reason there's just something scary to some of a poem where a village gets eaten by a monster the size of a hill

[Guest]

I always wanted to write children's books, I certainly wasn't satisfied with them as a child, I remember being read Moby **** when I was quite small (around 7) reading myself Grimm's Fairy Tails, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Call of Cthulhu...

I tried sharing my similar taste with my younger cousins (many moons ago) but for some reason there's just something scary to some of a poem where a village gets eaten by a monster the size of a hill

Moby asterisks! LOL!!!

There are just some funny censor things.

[Lakumi]

Moby asterisks! LOL!!!

There are just some funny censor things.

Yeah methinks the word has gotten a different meaning as the ages went on... not sure how a short name for Richard is a slang for male genitalia but there you go

[prisonchaplain]

For really young readers (pre-K through early 1st grade) Bob's Books are cute and effective. We used them on our kids, and my wife is a Kindergarten teacher--so, she should know. :-)

search - bob books - The Scholastic Store

[Windseeker]

Books I remember liking were

Lentil by Robert McCloskey

Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton

The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton

Gus Was a Friendly Ghost by Jane Thayer

The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop

Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel

Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina

Stone Soup by Marcia Brown

The Snowy Day Paperback by Ezra Jack Keats

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst

The Story of Ferdinand Paperback by Munro Leaf

I really enjoyed the books that had songs with them like

Over in the Meadow

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

Edited February 26, 2014 by Windseeker

[mirkwood]

Age appropriate chapter books, Dr. Seuss and My Monster Mama Loves Me So: Laura Leuck, Mark Buehner: 9780060088606: Amazon.com: Books

[Guest LiterateParakeet]

OH, I'm surprised my favorites haven't been mentioned!

King Bidgood in the Bathtub by Aubrey Wood--darling story and amazing illustrations. My favorite!

The Napping House by Aubrey Wood--so cute!

Bad Case of Stripes

Love You Forever

[applepansy]

Have you tried reading him chapter books over a longer period of time yet? Sometimes they go for that and sometimes not. Some good ones to try would be The Phantom Tollbooth, Charlotte's Web or anything by Roald Dahl.

Otherwise i would suggest getting a good collection of fairy tales. Some picture books my kids have liked are The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Monster at the End of this Book.

Yes, we're reading Winnie the Pooh and Lehi's Dream.

[applepansy]

Thank you everyone. This is awesome!