Children’s books

Good morning. I hope you’ve been enjoying Book Week – and if you haven’t read any of the posts, please go back and look as there are some great pieces by a wide variety of contributors. I’ll do a big round-up on Sunday (which will also be Giveaway day, so don’t miss it), so you can have a leisurely read while you’re sitting in bed with your cups of tea and boxes of chocolate – or while you’re manically trying to entertain a bunch of children while your other half lies in bed for Mother’s Day, of course!

Today is all about children’s books and I’d love for you all to leave your recommendations for different age groups. It’s such a joy to discover a new children’s book author that the girls can devour.

Eleanor’s current favourites

At the moment, Eleanor (who is 18 months) is particularly into The Tiger who Came to Tea, Room on the Broom, Each Peach Pear Plum, One Ted Falls out of Bed and Where is Maisy’s Panda? However, she will happily be read the majority of the books in her Tidy Books bookcase and she also really loves sitting in her cot for 10-15 minutes looking through piles of books, which is handy for grabbing a quick shower or putting clothes away (hmm, must put those three baskets of clothes away). She’s also very patient when I start falling asleep reading (a very common occurrence it seems – I start saying complete nonsense, instead of reading the words on the page).

Rosemary’s current favourites

Rosemary (who is 4 and a half) has just finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and we’re now facing the problem of her wanting to continue with the series, but being far too young to deal with many of the issues in the later books. We figure she’ll probably be OK with The Prisoner of Azkaban, but after that she’ll have to wait a few years. She’s enjoying the Magic Tree House Books and we recently bought a box set of the whole series. I think they’re books she’ll enjoy reading to herself once she gets the hang of reading properly, so hopefully it’s a good investment. And in learning to read books, she’s really loving the Usborne Very First Reader series and actually jumped for joy when I told her I’d ordered the next three in the series (though she may change her mind when she discovers that from Book 8 she has to read the whole thing herself, rather than take turns). She’s also enjoying non-fiction books, such as The Little Genius series of books about the body. I heard her telling her imaginary friend Toni about something in the Eyes book the other day, so it definitely goes down well.

Later today there will be a guest post from Vickie at Never Found the Plot about pre-school books, a post about the Walker Books Picture Book Picnic and hopefully one or two other posts about children’s books, so keep coming back (or subscribe, of course).