A few favorite read-alouds for the whole family:
Ramona Quimby series and Ralph S. Mouse series by Beverly Cleary
Narnia Chronicles by C.S. Lewis
Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Pippi Longstocking and 2 sequels by Astrid Lindgren
Holes by Louis Sachar (for older kids)
Clementine and two sequels by Sara Pennypacker (shorter than most of these)
The Tale of Desperaux by Kate DiCamillo
The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
Please share your favorites!
If you're looking for more, I highly recommend _The Read-Aloud Handbook_ by Jim Trelease. There have been 6 or so editions; any one would be fine. He gives age recommendations, short descriptions of each book, and research on why reading aloud is so important. Your local library should have a copy. I'll also continue to post favorites as I think of them.
4 comments:
I left a post yesterday, I am not sure what happened to it. Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for the great list. We have read some of these already and loved them.
I have read some of these with the kids already. :) Some I will wait on a bit... For example Desperaux was good, but a bit gory for my brood. We do like the Ramona series and I just picked up a few more of those. We have read the Ralph the Mouse books and love those as well. We are working on the third Narnia book and the kids are entranced. Have you read the books by Julie Andrews on a little cat named Bo? We just read the first one and the kids loved it. Actually, we read nine of the chapters in one day, in one sitting. We had to stop to go to gymnastics, we read the last two chapters last night. The library has the second book and we will pick that one up on our library day.
Thanks for some new recommendations!
OH, I forgot to say that I really like the read aloud handbook by Trelease, BUT I did have some major problems with portions of it. Frankly, at one point I wanted to throw it across the room. I have the 2001 version and in chapter two he quotes (on page 36) The Albany Area Reading Council in one of their brochures as saying, "All babies are born equal. Not one can... speak, count, read, or write at birth... But by the time they go to kindergarten they are not equal! The difference, of course, is between the parents who "raise" their children, as opposed to parents who "watch" them grow up."
I thought this really led people to believe that children who have any reading difficulties are from parents who didn't read to them. Who didn't work with them and that is such a HUGE fallacy. This of course, comes from me, who has watched two of my sisters absolutely love books, we were read to constantly by my mother and they both had reading problems, one extremely severe. My own son has been quite delayed in his reading and I have read tons to the child. He loves books, but just has had problems with that portion of his brain developing slightly slower then the others. I DO agree with much that he says, but I DO disagree with several generalizations that he makes.
So, anyways he nearly lost me on this chapter because he made several comments like this and it drove me crazy. They were thrown in all through that chapter. I think that some parents will be highly offended if they have had experiences such as mine and I am afraid he may do more harm that good in those cases.
Alright, I knew you weren't looking for a whole tirade there! :) I just felt I needed to share my frustration on this book. Kristen has already heard my tirade! Poor Kristen, she ends up hearing many of my tirades.
Thanks for your insightful comments and experiences, Anna. I think you're right that Trelease engages in hyperbole. Have you found any similar books you like better? (I know we have one by Mem Fox and a big yellow one whose name escapes me now, but I haven't used them much yet.) Mostly I think Trelease is useful for anecdotes and even more so for the annotated booklists.
Thanks for the tip on the Bo books. All her books are catalogued under Julie Edwards at our library, and I've heard great things about the Whangdoodle book and the Mousical book, as well.
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