Favorite read alouds

[Singingmom]

What is your family's all time favorite read-aloud and what were the ages of your kids when you read it? :smile :read :smile

[gardenmama]

Hi! I would definitely say The Little House books. :D

[shilohmm]

Sandra Boynton's eight "little books"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0689823223/qid=1114380544/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-2489922-1667913?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/068982663X/ref=pd_sim_b_1/104-2489922-1667913?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

Different kids had different absolute favorites, but we all liked all of them. Just about any Boynton, really. Youngest's favorite is Boynton's Dinosaur's Binkit. Second youngest's was Barnyard Dance.

Boynton is best from infancy to six or seven, although my eight year old still picks one out once in a while. :)

All my girls have absolutely loved, and my boys have liked, Nan Gilbert's 365 Bedtime Stories, but it is out of print, unfortunately. :( It follows the various adventures of the kids on a short block in Iowa, a short story for each day, and it's set in the 1950's or earlier (although it was reissued in the 1970's with a few changes here and there - don't like that version as well). I had it when I was a little girl and we've picked up a few copies from e-bay. 365 Days is good for grade-school aged kids.

Poems for Summer, Poems for Autumn, Poems for Winter, and Poems for Spring, all books with poems selected by Robert Hull. We love about two thirds the poems and don't care about the other third, but I periodically pick up the one for that season and read them at meal times, and everyone likes some of them. I also read a lot of poetry out of a collection of books from my childhood - Best in Children's Books - and we particularly like the Animal Crackers collection by Christopher Morley and the Poems Around the Year. We've got two or three different versions of Robert Louis Stevenson's Child's Garden of Verses, but I think I read the selections from BICB the most. (We picked a lot of those up from E-bay, too, but strays show up at GoodWill and used bookstores quite often.)

http://avatar.lib.usm.edu/~degrum/html/research/re-bestindex.shtml

Middle daughter's favorite read-aloud next to 365 Days was Me and the Bears, by Robert Bright, which is in one of the BICBs, while youngest and oldest were very fond of Lion Cub by Hamilton Williamson (also BICB), and second son's favorite was Angus and the Ducks, by Marjorie Flack, which is in a BICB but you could buy all three of them (Angus and the Ducks, Angus and the Cats, Angus Lost - all about a little scottish terrier and his adventures) new as a set not too long back.

My girls love Little House in the Big Woods, and my oldest son liked Farmer Boy. I think the girls liked Little House when they were five (and six, and seven... and my 12 yo still reads them to herself :) ), while my son was a bit older - seven or eight, at least.

My boys get pretty rowdy if the book isn't very carefully chosen for them, and even then get antsy after a short time, so all our "read as a family" stuff is either very short or broken into little pieces - I think that's why the 365 Days book and poems work the best for us. :)

Sheryl

[Mama Bird]

My 6 yo DD loves the American Girl books. I do, too! We also love:

Little House books
Junie B. Jones books
Magic Treehouse books
Magic Schoolbus books

We have read some of each this year, while DD is 6.

My 2yo DS's favorite book right now is "The Little Engine that Could." I love to hear, "I fffink I can...I fffink I can..." :laughtears

[Sara]

My 6yo just loves the Boxcar Children. In fact, she is waiting for me to get book #4! She had just turned 6 when we started reading the series. When she was younger her all-time favorite book was "The Little Engine That Could."

My 2yo's favorite book, at the moment, is "The Runaway Bunny" and we read this book several times each day. :)

[Quietspirit]

Our favorites:

Boxcar Children
Bonnie Pryor American Adventurers series (kind of like American Girl books but for boys) :tu :tu :tu
Magic Treehouse
Little House books (the 10 & 7 year olds like these, my 5 year old gets a bit bored ;))

[Stonebeck Farm]

We are currently reading all the Paddington Bear chapter books and we love them! (Ages 5 and 3- the 5 year old loves them more. Paddington is just his style with all the "getting into innocent mischief.") (5 books down, 6 to go!)

[grandmama]

We loved the LIttle House books, too, as well as the Box Car children.

Also, we like missionary biographies. Our favorites are from the Bethany House series. We especially loved the story of Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth (fun story of their meeting and courtship) and Gladys Alward.

Last year I read Uncle Tom's Cabin outloud during lunch to my older children and my mother....best read we ever did!