s/o - Chapter books that are good for young kids?

[Iveyrock]

I was thinking of trying Mr. Popper's Penguins, but I haven't read it since I was a kid. I was also thinking about books from back when my mom was a girl - I loved reading her copy of Honeybunch; Her First Little Garden - but I have no idea where I would even find that now.

[zak]

:popcorn

We LOVE the Narnia series here. :tu

[RooMama]

My husband just finished reading the Narnia series to Christopher. Now, they're reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM for the second time. I'm reading him Because of Winn-Dixie. Matt read Watership Down to him 3 times, but I'm not sure I would recommend that. :shifty

[Blueberrybabies]

:popcorn

Zak, so your 4 yo likes Narnia? Do you edit at all?

[backtobasicsmum]

:nak2
- Charlotte's web and other stories by same author
-The tale of Desperoux
-The mouse and the motorcycle
-Abel's Island
-Origional Winnie the Pooh series
-Wind in the Willows

We have read all of these so far this year.

[kiloyd]

We read The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, or The Boxcar Children at bedtime here.

I read ds Mr. Poppers Penquins recently too and he really liked it, he is 7. I also read him The Secret Garden and just changed the Yorkshire language in most of it.

I'm going to soon read him The Incredible Journey.

I'll look at my bookshelf and see what else I've read from my old books.

[mom2boys]

Do you have "honey for a child's heart" book?
I use that book a LOT (as well as my sonlight catalog :shifty) to figure out good books for the boys. :-)

[jenny_islander]

We have really enjoyed Raggedy Ann and Andy as well as a collection of Beatrix Potter stories arranged in a loose order because a character from the first one appears in the second and so on. Believe it or not, Disney's Fairies novels are also quite good: they contain a surprising amount of meat in the fluff.

[tempus vernum]

Do you have "honey for a child's heart" book?
I use that book a LOT (as well as my sonlight catalog :shifty) to figure out good books for the boys. :-)

:yes and Jim Trelease's Read aloud handbook :rockon :)

[zak]

Zak, so your 4 yo likes Narnia? Do you edit at all?


He LOVES them. Obsessed, nearly! :) Yes, I edit some things... mostly parts about blood. But for the most part I read them straight through. :) :tu I think we started the series when he was just over three and are reading it a second time now. :)

[OkiMom]

My 2 year old has recently become obsessed with me reading to her out of whatever I'm reading. She wants me to read to her out of my books while she is playing with her blocks or puzzles. I'm wasn't expecting it so I went to the library and got a few children books to read (I left mine back in the states in storage). Ones shes liked:
Little House on the Prairie (I like certain parts but shes sensitive so I edit out anything to do with spanking or other violence. She would get upset)
The Little Princess
The Anne of Green Gable Series.
She keeps bringing me a few of the Japanese books we have around the house but since I can't read Japanese (or speak past the basics) I can't read them to her.

[Grover]

We dont consider beatrix potter as chapter books-I started reading those to my eldest a 9 months and all the others as toddlers.The small copies worked best-lots of pages to turn and lots of pictures.Whenn he was two -we had to read Nathan a whole load of tractor pamphlets the John Deere shop kindly gave us-because he was a tractor fan at 2.I spent several months reading about balers and unbalers with optional twine facilities :P~ :giggle.Those were similar to long picture books[lots of writing-along side the picture.
Our first chapter books were the Noddy stories by Enid Blyton and then the Magic faraway tree also by Enid Blyton[Beware older copies of Noddy are very dated in terms of racism -newer copies had most of this removed].The Jack Stalwart books are excellent as are the magic tree house books.
We read the Thornton Burgess book this year as part of our HOD curriculum and those chapters are really short[I also knitted small animals that matched the story to keep his intrest/focus]]We found Charlottes Web worked at around 5 -6 and I am not sure that our older ones really understood Winnie the pooh etc untill around 7.The books are very funny but once you can grasp the spelling mistakes and childish mistakes.-Just William is hillarious but more for the older child also .We are currently reading Charlie and The chocolate factory-we dont mind Roald Dahl but I know some disapprove of his humour

[Zipporah]

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (edited in parts but not much)
Most of Dick King-Smith's book (wrote the original Babe story aka "The sheep-pig")
Swallows and Amazons (in a slightly old fashioned British adventure story kid of way)
Far-away Tree and Wishing Chair series (slightly edited in parts)

[kiloyd]

Do you have "honey for a child's heart" book?
I use that book a LOT (as well as my sonlight catalog :shifty) to figure out good books for the boys. :-)

:yes and Jim Trelease's Read aloud handbook :rockon :)




:yes

[lenswyf]

Check out the read-aloud lists for Sonlight. They choose such wonderful books!

[Leslie]

How young? My preschooler loves the Little Pear series (Little Pear is a Chinese boy) by Eleanor Frances Lattimore. She's also enjoying Little Pilgrim's Progress, a rewriting of the original Pilgrim's Progress for very young children, by Helen Taylor. Paddington Bear and the original Boxcar Children series are some my boys liked between the ages of 5-8.

[TestifyToLove]

Pippi Longstocking
Babe the Pig
...another book by that same author, can't remember its name
The Enchanted Forest series (Dealing with Dragons, Talking with Dragons, 2 others)
Paddington Bear
Milly Molly Mandy
My Father's Dragon, Elmer and the Dragon and The Dragons of Blueland
The Wizard of Oz series (all 14 not just the first, they are terrific books)
The Jack Tales
Secet Garden
The Little Princess

[teamommy]

Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace (this is a series)
Stuart Little
Old Mother West Wind by Thornton Burgess
The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (this is the only one we read at 4, we have read most of the rest but not til ds was 6)
Beezus and Ramona, and Ramona the Pest (these are the ones where Ramona was 4 and 5)
The Ralph Mouse books by Beverly Cleary
There are lots more but those are ones I can remember right now that we read at 3-4-5!

[newday]

:nak2
- Charlotte's web and other stories by same author
-The tale of Desperoux
-The mouse and the motorcycle
-Abel's Island
-Origional Winnie the Pooh series
-Wind in the Willows

We have read all of these so far this year.


We still haven't finished The Tale of Desperoux because I just can't find a way to get around the 'violence' from Miggory when she gets Pea by knife-point up out of bed and makes her do her will.... I don't think my girls are ready for that yet.
We LOVE the Wind in the Willows.
And the original Pooh.

[MidnightCafe]

A few that haven't been mentioned yet:

Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield
All-of-a-kind Family by Sydney Taylor

[Grover]

Remembered some more.
Sophie hits six and others in that series by Dick King Smith[he alo.s wrote sheep pig and Jenius.We loved Jenius
My girls loved Milly Molly Mandy -Am I the only one who shorted her name to MMM or just plain Milly :O?

[Iveyrock]

oooh, i remember ballet shoes, i loved it when i was a girl :heart

[ReedleBeetle]

Marking this to come back to.

[cro]

We're reading through the Little House series - both boys like them, but my 4yo loses interest after a while. The Ramona books are good too - again, my younger one wasn't into them as much as my older one.

For shorter chapter books, we've read Junie B. Jones (both boys liked them, but I don't care for her language/attitude, so we don't read those anymore.), Jigsaw Jones, and Magic Treehouse. The latter 2 are huge favorites with everyone.

[sprout]

:nak2
- Charlotte's web and other stories by same author
-The tale of Desperoux
-The mouse and the motorcycle
-Abel's Island
-Origional Winnie the Pooh series
-Wind in the Willows

We have read all of these so far this year.


I remember reading the Mouse and the Motorcycle when I was little!

I can even picture the cover....I'm going to put that one on my list:heart

[IslandMama]

Check out the read-aloud lists for Sonlight. They choose such wonderful books!

:yes

We've recently read Strawberry Girl, The Wizard of Oz, Narnia, and Black Beauty...

[sprout]

is Ballet Shoes part of a series?

[Treenahurricane]

Grace really enjoys the stories of the Magic Treehouse books right now, they are short enough to keep her attention for a continuing story chapter book. Books like The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder are great because each chapter can stand alone in plot.

[klpmommy]

P&E loved Mr. Popper's penguins. Just enough facts, plenty of silliness & frequent enough illustrations. :)

Other than that, all that my kids have liked have been Magic Schoolbus chapter books. And non fiction. Non fiction about snakes, sharks, bats, spiders......

[newday]

my girls are 7 and 8 so it seems they may be a little older than this thread is geared to, but right now we are reading Pilgrim's Progress, and although we take it in short bits because the vocabulary is challenging, they think it is wonderful. We are using it for a devotional book right now (kind of) so I find scripture that fits (or contrasts :shifty) what we find in the book. So fun!!
Did I mention Pagoo? Lovely reading and illustrations.
In another thread I mention some of this...
The Animal Family
anything by George Macdonald
E B White's books
Incredible Journey

lots that have already been listed :)

---------- Post added at 10:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:10 PM ----------

P&E loved Mr. Popper's penguins. Just enough facts, plenty of silliness & frequent enough illustrations. :)

Other than that, all that my kids have liked have been Magic Schoolbus chapter books. And non fiction. Non fiction about snakes, sharks, bats, spiders......

yeah we pretty much can't get enough of anything DK publishers puts out, they have excellent non-fiction!!!

[ncsweetpea]

So is 3 too young to start reading short chapter books? She'll sit engaged with a very long picture book now...

[newday]

So is 3 too young to start reading short chapter books? She'll sit engaged with a very long picture book now...

oh no! i didn't even wait until they would sit. if they would listen with crayons and paper, or in the car on a trip, or while in the tub (really :)) I would read it to them. The Bible, chapter books, Poetry -- anything beautiful really. Sometimes it was great, sometimes it is kind of so-so and sometimes they run off screaming. Just keep reading. :tu