You know when your child audience is ready to explore stories beyond picture books, ready to pay attention to and enjoy chapter books, but is still … a small child? What do you read then?
Noah’s four, and he’s been into chapter books for about six months now. Here’s the scoop:
- We read A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and House at Pooh Corner (of course), and that was awesome; they’re such great read-alouds, and so gentle. (Granted, in retrospect I don’t think it would have killed Milne to include a female character other than Kanga, or to give Kanga at least a characteristic or two beyond nurturing/maternal, but oh well.)
- We read a couple of Arnold Lobel’s “Frog and Toad” books.
- We read Emily Jenkins’s sweet little 2006 Toys Go Out, which has a sort of modernized Pooh-y-ness and is entirely very-young-child-friendly except for two inexplicable and unnecessary references to “axe murderers” (on pages 39 & 48, for those of you who wish to avoid troubling question immediately before bedtime).
- We read the first “Magic Tree House” book, Dinosaurs before Dark, which fascinated Noah–he loved following the extended single narrative from chapter to chapter, rather than the more episodic short-story-ish structure of the others. We continued with The Knight at Dawn, which had some problems in terms of acting like it had educational content but not really delivering on that (the anachronistic ye olde language in the dialogue, and some other historical issues, bugged us) and including some rather dark asides with regard to torture and so forth. And then we checked out Mummies in the Morning, which is just weird and potentially disturbing and pointless. So we quit with that series.
- After some online research, I discovered Bruce Coville’s “Moongobble & Me” books, and we requested The Dragon of Doom from our library. What a cool book! Noah’s head-over-heels for it, and it’s much better-written than the “Magic Tree House” books. I’ll write a proper review of this one soonish. In the meantime: I recommend it! As with the Pooh books, I wish there were any female characters other than a cooking-and-cleaning-and-otherwise-uncharacterized mother (and it’s surprising to me to find this stark absence in a book from 2003–like, why do even the toad and the dragon require masculine pronouns?). But still: awesome balance of adventure and a basically gentle outlook on the world, with nothing too scary.
What else is there? There are only a handful of “Moongobble & Me” books–we’re going to need a new series (or at least a new individual text) soon. Help!
4 Comments
I recommend The Tale of Despereaux – was recently made into a cartoon (meh), but the book is really very lovely, with a great message about the importance of individuality/being yourself/accepting people for who they are. I think it’s geared to a slightly older audience (as are the Moongobble books), but I find reading aloud sort of skews that age recommendation. Give it a read first and if appropriate, save it for him for when he’s older.
Here’s a review: http://childrensbooks.about.com/cs/fairytales/fr/despereaux.htm
I was talking to my friends in the early childhood section of my department and they recommended the Ramona books (which I have never read, but have heard good things about for years). Apparently, there is a kick-ass female main character. One also said that her oldest son loved the early Little House books when he was 5, but I only have vague memories of those too.
Thanks, Molly! M (5 in November) has been devouring loads of chapter books lately, and it’s good to have some recommendations to help keep up with his consumption! (And yes, this is one of the *best* problems that a parent could have!)
Since I haven’t commented before I will say- I really like your blog. On the topic of books- My little brother was a big fan of Gaurdians of G’Hool (sp????) but he is much younger than me so I’ve never read them (nor were they read to me). The Enchanted Forest Chronicles were a big favorite in my house growing up. Also, pretty much anything by Jane Yolen. There is one in particular, more a novella than full grown novel, with a dragon in it that is discovered by a young squire who learns much wisdom. It has a great little twist toward the end, but I can NOT remember the name. My daughter and I just finished Pooh and she is actually quite enjoying an illustrated book of Greek myths for kids- D’auliers (sp?? again…). Hope these are kinda helpful. I will most certainly need to look into some of the ones you’ve posted here…