BOOK WEEK: Children’s favourite books

Did you read yesterday’s review of Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry? Did you enter the competition to win a copy for yourself?

Today’s Book Week post is a round-up of the girls’ favourite books. They both love their books, though Rosemary is in a phase where she’s decided that she doesn’t want to learn to read herself in case we stop reading to her. We’re busy reassuring her that we won’t stop reading to her unless she wants us to (and I’m fairly sure that, come the day, I will probably bawl my eyes out) and pointing out all the other benefits of reading – such as being able to read the description in iPlayer of what a particular episode is about – ah, reading as it helps you to watch TV and use a computer. We’ve also mentioned things such as reading to her sister (though not sure she sees that as a benefit at the moment), reading signs, reading letters and postcards from Grandma and Grandpa, reading instructions and recipes, reading treasure hunt clues…

Rosemary’s current favourites

Well, at the moment, Rosemary’s favourite seems to be absolutely any Horrid Henry. If you don’t know Horrid Henry, he’s a boy who tends to mess about, play tricks and be pretty devious for the most part. He has an incredibly annoying brother, Perfect Peter, who always plays by the rules and sucks up to anyone in authority.

Every now and then (like yesterday, for example), I decide that it would be best to throw all the Horrid Henry books in the bin (OK, I couldn’t actually do that, I’d have to give them to the RSPCA shop) and replace them with books about perfect little girls who have perfectly proper adventures and never argue with their parents or siblings and tidy up after themselves and say ‘Yes, yes, yes’ instead of ‘No, no, no’. But then I realise that, actually, Horrid Henry does usually get his comeuppance and he’s really a lot more fun than some of the saccharine fairy princess stuff.

What she really likes, of course, are ‘chapter books’ – she likes to have a chapter of one book from me, followed by a chapter of another book from Chris. Or books like Horrid Henry, where each chapter is essentially a self-contained story, work well too. We get through a good few a week from the library, but are always on the lookout for new series.

She’s read most of the Roald Dahl’s, and I especially enjoyed reading The BFG to her. I gave him a really quite thick Gloucestershire accent, it seems, because, while we were reading it, we went to the Co-op and Rosemary whispered that one of the members of staff sounded just like the BFG. It took me a moment to realise that what he actually sounded like was me doing my BFG voice. So, yes, didn’t you realise the BFG was from Gloucestershire?

It would be good to have a series or author to work through that’s not Horrid Henry. I’m thinking of having a go at some E Nesbit, soon. I’m also adding the first four books in the Magic Tree House series to our Christmas Amazon order. Any other ideas?

Eleanor’s current favourites

Eleanor loves all things Hairy Maclary, in particular Scarface Claw, though this is currently lost up at the school and will hopefully return before the holidays, before Eleanor forgets him entirely.

If you’ve never read any of Lynley Dodd’s books, then you are really missing out – and probably don’t have children! They have lovely pictures but, most importantly for the children (especially the 14-month-old children, but the 4-year-olds still enjoy them), fantastic rhyming stories that you can’t help but read to a steady rhythm. Eleanor will be getting a couple more to add to our collection for Christmas.

One of the few characters she’s really into is Maisy. We have quite a few Maisy books already, from when Rosemary was little. Eleanor’s current favourite is Maisy Goes to the Library, where she has a ball of a time trying to find a book about fish – who knew the Dewey Decimal system could be such fun? (Well, who am I kidding, I did – I did work experience in our local library a couple of times and took immense pleasure in putting the books away and making prodigious use of that Dewey Decimal system, even putting my own non-fiction books into Dewey Decimal order, though there weren’t really enough of them at the time to make it a relevant system – now, maybe it would be.

She’s recently got into the Bears in the Night, so I’m wondering about some other Berenstain Bears books or whether she’s even ready to have a go at The Cat in the Hat.

Rhyming books are definitely a big hit and it’s probably time to dig out The Night Before Christmas, which Rosemary loved at a similar age.

As well as rhyming books and colourful books and books with Scarface Claw or Maisy in them, Eleanor’s also recently been taken by books with lots of pictures of baby photos in them. There’s one where there are ten photos of babies with different expressions and she spent about 5 or 6 minutes at bedtime today sitting looking at this page and squealing at the babies on it. She’ll happily flick through a photo album for ages, too (or stand and watch the digital photo frame!).

What books are your children into at the moment? Do you have any suggestions that we should buy or get from the library for either of them? For Rosemary, I’d be particularly interested in chapter book suggestions – they don’t have to be horrid (nor do they have to be perfection personified).