Kids Book Recommendations

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TeresaJ
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Kids Book Recommendations

Post by TeresaJ » Sun Mar 07, 2021 3:57 pm

I'll start this thread over here, since it has come in handy.

These are some of our favorites so far:

Picture Books
Margaret Wise Brown: Two Freight Trains, Runaway Bunny
Donald Crews: Freight Train, plus like everything else
Nina Crews: Below and I'll Catch the Moon
Ann Morris: On the Go, Bread Bread Bread, Hats Hats Hats <-- This entire series is so great.
Christy Hale: Dreaming Up
James Mayhew: Starlight Sailor
Bill Martin: Listen to the Rain
...
Oh man, there are way too many great picture books. I'll just list some more authors.

Anna Dewdney (Nobunny's Perfect and Llama Llama)
Kathy Henderson (her retelling of Lugalbanda is still a favorite)
Lois Ehlert (so many)
Ezra Jack Keats (snowy day - classic)
Maurice Sendak (all the classics)
Arnold Lobel (Frog and Toad, Frog and Toad, Frog and Toad, Frog and Toad <3)

Plus Blexbolex - Seasons, and we really liked the Patricelli Potty book.

Early Chapter Books
Favorites so far include...
Harry Potter, at least the first three (kiddo frickin' loves these)
The Boxcar Children
The first few Little House on the Prairie books
Zoey and Sassafrass (except I couldn't be cool with the mold monster - gross gross gross)

Plus
Stephen Biesty's Incredible Cross-Sections
David Macaulay - Castle, Cathedral, and Mosque
The DK Encyclopedia series

...

We just started The Great Brain, which is ok so far. The chapters are a little long. I dunno. I think we're reaching a point similar to where my patience just couldn't keep up with the kid's desire for novel-length dictation. He just needs to learn how to read on his own already. ...We're getting there.

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oxyjen
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Re: Kids Book Recommendations

Post by oxyjen » Sun Mar 07, 2021 4:51 pm

Stellaluna by Janell Cannon

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This book for the sole reason of an anthropomorphic possum and learning the term "sody sallyratus"
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(Also influenced as they were the best out of the kids' library picks the past couple weeks)

For chapter books, he loved little house, boxcar children, and the Charlie books by Roald Dahl (both the chocolate factory and Glass elevator sequel, though the second reads like a bad acid trip. Not a big fan of the elevator). Couldn't get him into the harry potter unfortunately. He's reading a Minecraft inspired take on "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" right now.

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Utisz
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Re: Kids Book Recommendations

Post by Utisz » Mon Mar 08, 2021 6:04 am

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TeresaJ
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Re: Kids Book Recommendations

Post by TeresaJ » Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:02 pm

Now that I have a kid, I’m going to argue that The Little Prince is not a kids’ book. It depends on nostalgia and lost innocence to work. Teenage minimum but early twenties is better.

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TeresaJ
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Re: Kids Book Recommendations

Post by TeresaJ » Mon Mar 08, 2021 8:35 pm

As an Oak Tree Grows is also really good on multiple levels.

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djm
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Re: Kids Book Recommendations

Post by djm » Mon Mar 08, 2021 10:02 pm

For slightly older kids you can't go wrong with the Moomin books, which are really rather lovely and full of wisdom.

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Roger Mexico
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Re: Kids Book Recommendations

Post by Roger Mexico » Tue Mar 09, 2021 9:59 am

My son got really into the Percy Jackson books, starting when he was 10.

(For anyone who doesn't know, this is a "young adult" fantasy series about modern-day teenagers who discover that they're actually demigod offspring of ancient Greek deities.)


Reading some of them along with him, I ended up being pleasantly surprised by how much history and actual mythology they manage to cover.



We're currently reading another YA fantasy series called the Wildwood Chronicles. (By Colin Meloy, who I just found out is also apparently in some semi-famous band I've never listened to called the Decemberists.)

I'm enjoying them so far. They're kinda quirky and fairly original (meaning they mostly avoid the overdone cliches that made me completely stop reading anything in the fantasy genre whatsoever a long time ago). The vocabulary/etc. is maybe a little closer to an early-high-school reading level, but my (currently 12-year-old) son is mostly handling it just fine.

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Ferrus
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Re: Kids Book Recommendations

Post by Ferrus » Tue Mar 09, 2021 10:42 am

Anything written by the Marqués de Sade.

Or maybe if they are at an age where they can understand bare intelligible Glaswegian patter Irving Welsh's Trainspotting.
Ex falso, quodlibet

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Madrigal
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Re: Kids Book Recommendations

Post by Madrigal » Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:57 pm

Ferrus wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 10:42 am
Anything written by the Marqués de Sade.

Or maybe if they are at an age where they can understand bare intelligible Glaswegian patter Irving Welsh's Trainspotting.
:D

At the age of ten, which was when I started high school, my mother only ever bought us Victorian novels to read (Penguin classics - Oscar Wilde, Dickens, the Brontë sisters etc), so I think she couldn't find or didn't want to buy my twin and I anything remotely kid-like (she was a literature teacher). I didn't buy my own books or ask for anything in particular - except ghost stories, I do remember asking for that, so we got M. R. James and others.

I recall that when we'd visit Argentina and a relative would give us books for teens, my mother never liked them and considered them trash. But I remember that I did get my pre-teen literature fix at the school library by borrowing the Nancy Drew or Anne of Green Gables series, for example. I suppose my mother did at least something right because the school library was also chock full of Mills and Boons romance books and I never touched those, though my friends read them a lot.
TeresaJ wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:02 pm
Now that I have a kid, I’m going to argue that The Little Prince is not a kids’ book. It depends on nostalgia and lost innocence to work. Teenage minimum but early twenties is better.
I think it's for all ages. Kids won't understand a lot of things. Though there is definitely a sort of camaraderie established between the reader and the little prince because of how he separates the world of adults from that of children. I read it several times over the years and part of the interest of that book is how it becomes another book every time you read it. It gets harder to read as the years go by.

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Ferrus
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Re: Kids Book Recommendations

Post by Ferrus » Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:43 pm

Madrigal wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:57 pm
At the age of ten, which was when I started high school, my mother only ever bought us Victorian novels to read (Penguin classics - Oscar Wilde, Dickens, the Brontë sisters etc), so I think she couldn't find or didn't want to buy my twin and I anything remotely kid-like (she was a literature teacher). I didn't buy my own books or ask for anything in particular - except ghost stories, I do remember asking for that, so we got M. R. James and others.
When I was a kid I used to have to go to a tutor who was a fierce old dragon of a woman for extra lessons on handwriting as I was so bad - ironically now it doesn't matter, but back then apparently it did a lot (and not being in my habit it is so bad I can't read my own writing). Although she also did some maths and english as well as I remember.

Anyway, I remember I was into the Goosebump books at the time. She basically denounced them and forced me to read books like Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and books such as that. At the time I resented it deeply, but in reflection she did me a signal service.
Ex falso, quodlibet

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