My daughter loves reading. If it was up to her we would read books all day long and quite often she requests them on repeat. With Christmas fast approaching we will no doubt be adding to her library. It got me thinking, what makes a good book in the eyes of a child? Is it the story, the adventure, the excitement? Is it the pictures, the colours, the detail? I’m guessing just like adults, children are attracted to different books depending on their character. In my little ones case (imaginative, funny, observant) I think it is the combination of detailed illustrations that she can muse over for hours, rhyming text and a good helping of humour that make a perfect book. This is her top 10 books of all time (so far!)
1. The gruffalo – A clever tale about a little mouse and a big gruffalo. It’s the humour, imagination and catchy rhymes that she enjoys, oh and mummy’s funny voices!
2. The gruffalos child – A follow up story, with the same clever mouse and this time, the gruffalo’s child. It uses the same winning recipe as the gruffalo.
3. The tiger who came for tea – A classic about a tiger that comes to a little girls house and eats all their food. My little one loves the humour and the fact that it is about food (she looooves food!)
4. Mog the Forgetful Cat – One of a whole series of Mog books. Written with brilliant humour and best of all its about a silly, fat cat. I love the illustrations of Judith Kerr.
5. Don’t wake the bear, hare! – This was one we took out of the library which had to be purchased immediately after! A story of a tea party and a big scary bear, who turns out of course not to be so scary :) A firm favourite and great to read outloud.
6. Tiddler – My daughter adores this story about Tiddler, the fish with a big imagination who tells tall tales. I have to say this is probably MY favourite book to read to her. I love that she points out all the different types of fish to me!
7. The tale of Mrs Tittlemouse – A Beatrix Potter classic about a houseproud little mouse who keeps getting unwelcome visitors! I’m suprised she loves these stories as much as she does as the originals are written in quite old fashioned English. But she does!
8. The tale of Mrs Tigglewinkle – Another Beatrix Potter classic about a hedgehog who does all the other animal’s washing. The house in the side of the hill and the talking animals really capture her imagination.
9. We all went on Safari – This counting book looks at all the animals on safari. She loves the African names and guessing who might be Mwambe or Akeyla and I love the beautiful illustrations in this book.
10. Rosie’s hat – Another gem by Julia Donaldson. A different style to her normal stories, it is a lovely little story about a girl who looses her hat. Its the great rhyme and rhythm that make this one such a hit!
Some great suggestions here! My 2 year old’s favourite book is “Whatever Next” and I get to read it A LOT every day! But others on his list are Dear Zoo, Where’s Spot, Aliens Love Underpants, Dinosaurs Love Underpants, Aliens in Underpants Save The World, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Peace At Last. So glad you reminded me about the Mog books.
Oooh there are some new ones for us there too! Thanks :) My little one really likes her stories and we’ve got into fairy stories but I find myself editing them for her little ears. My mum bought her the story of Pinocchio a few weeks ago, it is terrifying! I’ve hidden it! She has a very vivid imagination so I need to be careful with her!
The classics really are quite scary though. I was recently reading “there was an old lady who swallowed a fly” and it’s quite disturbing with all the repetition of “perhaps she’ll die”. Definitely one for you to avoid!
I know, we’ve got it! :/ Actually i’ve been thinking about this quite a lot recently. Littlelish doesn’t watch much tv but reads a lot. She needed more “story” type books which is why I got her onto the fairytales (really the light versions) but there are so many baddies and evil witches and what have you. I mean I know you can’t hide it from them forever but still…. Even most disney films are too much for her! She gets so carried away with it. I tried to watch Lilo and Stitch with her thinking it was funny and cute, geez she balled at so many parts of it. ” Muuuuummmy, where is stitch going? Where are they taaaaaking him?” I had to turn it off!!! She is really sensitive (and smart).
Hope it’s not rude but as a Mum AND a preschool teacher please may I add mine too?!
1.The Hungry caterpillar
2.My cat likes to hide in boxes
3.The elephant and the bad baby
4.The snail and the whale
5.Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see?
6.Whatever next
7.Monkey puzzle
8.Lost and found
9.Counting colours
10.Peepo
That’s not rude! That’s fantastic :) Just what I want and gives me some new ideas of which ones to buy next. We also have the hungry caterpillar and peepo – love them but some on your list I haven’t heard of, will check them out. Littlelish is really into Cinderella and the old school fairytales which I love reading too.