Chapter books.

[rivka]

I've recently started reading chapter books to Alex.

Her attention span for books is good - for example, she can stay interested in long fairy tales that have a high text-to-picture ratio. So I started keeping my eyes open for longer books that we could read, a chapter or two at a time.

My first thought was The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh. We tried a few of the stories, and she seemed to enjoy them well enough. But I realized that the humor in many of the stories is over her head. "Winnie-the-Pooh and the Bee Tree," sure, or the one where he gets stuck in Rabbit's hole after eating too much honey. But a lot of the stories are more subtle. Maybe in a couple of years...

My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett, is a book I never read as a child but have frequently seen recommended as a good first chapter book. I picked up a copy on my Wild Woman Weekend, with the idea that we'd go through its 77 pages a chapter or two at a time. Alex had different ideas. We wound up reading the whole book in one big gulp. It really is a perfect chapter book for a preschooler: action-packed, funny, suspenseful and exciting without being scary. The day after we finished it, she lay with it on the couch retelling it to herself, using the pictures to prompt her memory. She'd clearly taken in quite a lot. Fortunately, there are sequels.

Now we're trying out Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We've read two chapters so far, one per night. I'm skipping over some of the more long-winded descriptions. Alex really seems to like it - we've read some of the "My First Little House" picture book series, and so she was excited to have a whole long book about Laura and Mary.

It's hard to think of good chapter books for a 3.5-year-old. Alex may be a smart kid with a big vocabulary, but she lacks the life experience needed to make sense out of most books aimed at older children. And I don't really want to introduce scary or violent themes at this age. Internet discussions of what books people read to their preschoolers have often not been tremendously helpful. (You read The Hobbit to your three-year-old? Really? And The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Either my kid is sheltered and unsophisticated, or your kids are baby geniuses, or you're lying about how much they got out of it.)

Does anyone have any recommendations? I was thinking maybe Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle could come next, but it would probably be good to find some books that were written less than 50 years ago, for the sake of variety.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to remember when I started Elder Nephew on the Just-So Stories. He might have been closer to 5. My elder goddaughter liked Eloise a lot (or she was humoring me, but given her personality that's probably not the case). Anne of Green Gables, maybe? Oh, Mike and his steam shovel are always successful; there's an omnibus of 4 stories that's an inch thick and takes me a pot of tea to get through.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Anne of Green Gables is one of my favorite children's books in all the world, but I think it would be lost on a three-year-old even if I cut out most of the long paragraphs of description.

I don't have a very clear picture in my mind of the Just-So stories. *Gutenbergs (http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/jusss10.txt)* Hmm. It's maybe a little, ah, precious for my taste. I don't know how well it would go over, but we can see.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I don't know what all is still available in English, but Astrid Lindgren was a favorite of mine when I was starting to hear chapter books.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

OMG YES. Pippi Longstocking can't possibly be out of print.

But you do need to check the copyright pages--many of the classics have begun to be abridged. I had a devil of a time finding an uncut Wind in the Willows. (Oh yeah! Wind in the Willows!)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

My father read me "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" when I was a preschooler.

I didn't understand a lick of it, but I loved him reading to me.

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

The husband just read this to K. She's 4.5, and I don't think she would have handled it AT ALL last year, and even when I tried Alice in Wonderland a few months ago, she was drifty. Then again, he's very engaged about keeping her focused, and he does a quick review after the reading, and he talks about the plot and characters and stuff. (He's a spanish teacher and he teaches basic lit as a foreign language in his courses, so he's used to the glazed look, etc.) She loved the lion, and we watched two or three different movie versions last week. Now I think he's starting with Prince Caspian. They ended up doing a short geography discussion during this one because he said something about a "peninsula" and away they went.

[windypoint.livejournal.com]

Milly Molly Mandy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milly-Molly-Mandy

[tassie-gal.livejournal.com]

OH Milly Molly Mandy! I loved them when I was younger. They have lots of repetition but good stories which are fun.

[mizchalmers.livejournal.com]

Charlotte's Web worked for us. Claire was more like four.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

I was a HUGE fan of the Thornton Burgess books. They're all stories about animals, and I remember them being very age appropriate. That's my *memory* from about age 6 or so, though, reading them myself.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of those!

[geminigirl]

You might ask my friend aelf what she read with her daughter. Zoe is a few years older than Alex, but I know they've been reading chapter books for a while.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

We didn't get into chapter books until 4, but successes at that age have included Pippi, Roald Dahl, and The Spiderwick Chronicles, which I swear are pitched much older, but they are mostly adventures & trolls and not truly scary like The Hobbit. Now we are deeply into (as in, rereading multiple times) Captain Underpants. Less successful: E. B. White, Wizard of Oz, Pooh, Just So Stories, Ramona, Rabbit Hill (Richard Lawson, one of my favorites as a kid). My child likes plot and adventure, and not prose stylings and atmosphere! She also likes some of the Early Readers, although she can't read them herself and I'd have thought they'd be boring to listen to - Frog and Toad, Little Bear, Golly Sisters.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

My child likes plot and adventure, and not prose stylings and atmosphere!

I think this is probably where we are too, so your recommendations are extremely helpful. I'm surprised that Ramona wasn't more of a hit. Too much about her inner life?

I saw an older kid at nursery school with a Spiderwick Chronicles book, and was a little surprised. But we might give it a try on your suggestion.

[kuangning]

You can't judge by me, maybe, but my parents owned a set of books called Collier's Junior Classics. The last story my father ever read to me, when I was 3, maybe about to turn 4, was out of those -- the story where Cousin Annabelle turns a somersault and Caddie Woodlawn puts an egg down her blouse. (That was when he discovered I could read it on my own, which is why it was the last.)

They're not so much chapter books as collections of different medium-sized excerpts from longer books, so if she really likes some of them, you could then go find the full tales for her. They're grouped according to story type: fairy tales, holiday stories, "In Your Own Backyard," which did have a Laura Ingalls Wilder story in it, myths and legends, and so on. If you can find the set, I would recommend those.

I would also recommend almost anything Enid Blyton: Mr Pinkwhistle, Mr Meddle, and the Adventures of Pip shouldn't go over her head. The Wishing Chair stories should be good too.

[jenett]

The one I got fixated on at that age (to the point I memorised it and then taught myself to read out of it, apparently) was _The Wizard of Oz_.

Pooh was popular. (We had a family set of a large cloth with the Hundred Acre Wood places painted on it, and little cloth dolls for each character, that could be moved around.)

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass when I was not too much older - the latter in a volume that had the chess layouts for each chapter, so you could see her progression.

My father read me Asterix books quite regularly.

Bartholomew and the Oobleck (about which there is a hilarious family story involving the Blizzard of 78, which happened when I was about 3 and a quarter.)

Pippi Longstocking. Heidi. Greek myths. (Ok, I had a weird childhood: I do not necessarily recommend this one quite this early - I *did* get pretty close to the adult versions.) E. Nesbit. Various other early part of 20th century children's writers. All of the Mary Poppins books. Narnia.

My brother, when I was not too much older, got a copy of Italo Calvino's _Italian Fairy Tales_ and would read me a few each night (most of them are really short - a few paragraphs - and he was, in hindsight, carefully skipping the really gruesome ones, which is easy when you can skim through them fast.)

I wouldn't worry too much about 'not getting the adult amusement' - as far as I can tell, that's a bonus for the adult reading, and as long as the child is enjoying it, it doesn't matter that they're not getting the whole plot, etc.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths was one of my favorite books as a child, although I was a weird kid too (and I was traumatized by the illustration of all the things that came out of Pandora's box!)

(...um, here through friendsfriends, got intrigued by the conversation.)

[wintercreek]

Dr. Dolittle? I don't have a clear recollection of the content of the Dolittle books, but I do remember that I read through the series on my own at age six or so.

Also, to go along with Charlotte's Web perhaps Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan? I remember having those read to me when I was small, but I don't recall how small.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Peter Rabbit?

[wintercreek]

Seconding Beatrix Potter!

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

I read my kid The Thirteen Clocks when he was just a wee babe, but I think he got exactly as much out of that as he did out of me reading him the tax code. And, I suspect, as much as some preschoolers get out of The Hobbit.

Have you seen Zen Shorts? I forget who wrote it, and it may be too short for these purposes, but it may fit the bill for a rainy afternoon.

I think The Moffats, by Eleanor Estes might be good, but they aren't recent. Ditto Ramona Quimby. Have you looked at Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry? It's a bit of a '70s period piece, and you definitely want to read it yourself first to see how you think Alex would take it (Anastasia's mom has a baby, which Anastasia has some pretty strong opposition to, and Anastasia's grandmother has Alzheimer's and dies), but it might work.

In paging through juvenile fiction on Amazon, I have just run up against The Illyrian Adventure by Lloyd Alexander. I suspect that it will be some years yet before this book is interesting to Alex, and the front cover of the latest edition is a disgrace - they've done their best to invoke Lara Croft and Indiana Jones, and fetched up at de-sexed pulp novel. If you ran across it in a bookstore, you would put it aside, and that would be sad. One day, Alex will be just the right age for a heroine who swears fluently in a dozen languages and prefers mental math to a slide rule, and on that day, you will want this book.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I was deeply dubious when I heard my sweetie's daughter loved _All-of-a-Kind Family_ as her first chapter book. She's about 6 months younger than Alex. (I'm reading this thread with great interest for gift ideas.) I picked it up last week, thinking, "She can't possibly have *understood* it yet..." and read it myself in about an hour, thinking "well, maybe." It was a bit staggering to realize it's just as much Strange Time-And-Place Historical Fiction as the Little House books, even though Gertie might still be alive.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Oh, I loved that.

And yeah, Alex doesn't live in Beverly-Cleary-land either.

Oh, there's a series of six books by Dick King-Smith, who is British, about a stubborn rough-and-tumble little girl called Sophie who loves animals. Sophie is just starting school in the first books, so about 4.5 or 5. They are paperback chapter books with adorable black and white sketches. I found them and bought them for myself as an adult.

[lissamc.livejournal.com]

I asked my teens, and they recommended "The Boxcar Children" and "The Magic Treehouse" series.

[naomikritzer]

I would leave both of these for Alex to read to herself when she learns.

I actually used The Magic Treehouse as an example of how badly written children's series books can be. Kids enjoy them because they're fun and plot-heavy but they would be really unsatisfying to read out loud.

I loved the Boxcar Children when I was a kid and was deeply disappointed when I re-read it. But this was one of Molly's early chapter books and she fell in love with it, re-read it multiple times, and read every one of the mysteries she could get her hands on (and there are about 200 now, although only the first dozen were actually written by the original author).

[carbonel]

It's been a long time since I've read the Moomin books by Tove Jansson, but I think those might work.

[ewein2412]

let me second that! these were the first books I read aloud with Sara. She was certainly no more than 2 1/2 at the time and she loved them. Mark, my second child, had far less of an attention span than Sara did for such stuff, but I suspect Alex is more Sara-like than Mark-like.

Don't start with the weird first "chronological" one, Comet in Moominland. Start with Finn Family Moomintroll. Our favorite, though, is Moomintroll Midwinter.

[erisian-fields.livejournal.com]

Colin (2 weeks younger than Alex) loves "The Magic Treehouse" books and his sisters liked them when they were first coming out. Also just about anything by Dr. Seuss, especially the longer books.

John Erikson has a series of books that are just as good for the adults reading them as the kids listening--Hank the Cowdog (http://www.hankthecowdog.com/). Like the Buggs Bunny cartoons when we were little, most of the jokes are over little kids' heads, but the stories and characters are engaging and funny.

[naomikritzer]

It really depends on the kid. Molly was not enthralled by Alice in Wonderland as a preschooler, but Kiera is having Ed read her Through the Looking Glass for the second time now because she likes the books so much. Molly, on the other hand, loved the Chronicles of Narnia as a preschooler and sat happily through all seven. So you never know.

I totally get where you're coming from on the need to avoid violence and scariness, though. I had an enthusiastic early reader and finding books that were interesting yet age-appropriate was surprisingly hard.

Molly really loved the Ramona series by Beverly Clearly as read-aloud books when she was in preschool. They are hilarious and approachable and surprisingly up-to-date considering how old most of them are. (There's this scene in one of them where Ramona's parents forget to start the crock pot, get home to no dinner, make pancakes instead, and snipe at each other until they blow up. It's painfully hilarious, because I think I've had more or less that fight....and that books is almost as old as I am.) She also really loved Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and its sequels by Judy Blume, although she clearly identified with Fudge and he inspired all sorts of misbehavior. (At least she didn't eat anyone's turtle.)

Junie B. Jones is very popular among young readers but I can't handle reading them out loud. (They're told in the highly ungrammatical voice of a kindergartener / first grader.) I saved those for Molly to read herself when she started reading, but some parents love them.

If anyone suggests Birchbark House as an alternative / addendum to the Little House books (it's about a Native American girl in approximately the same period) be aware that it includes quite possibly the most upsetting death scene I've seen in children's fiction. It's definitely a book for older children. It's a good book, mind you, but OMG.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have thought of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, but I can definitely see the appeal. Thanks!

I love Ramona so much. I moved to Portland OR as an adult, and I was still so tickled to actually visit Klickitat Street.

[marici.livejournal.com]

Well. I read LotR by myself around second grade, but when I read through the Hobbit, there was a lot that was familiar, and my parents explained that I'd been read it before. I suspect my first run through was Mom or Dad honoring the letter of the "read before bedtime" promise but picking something they'd like to re-read on their own. I didn't really grasp the books for several years after I could read them myself, but I wouldn't say the scraps I got from the very first were useless.

In other words: feel free to pick something for yourself sometime. Even if it's over her head, it doesn't mean Alex can't get anything to use later.

[tassie-gal.livejournal.com]

What about Enid Blyton? For a three year old I'd recommend
Make sure they arent edited or changed version as those ones can be icky.
1. The Enchanted Wood (1939)
2. The Magic Faraway Tree (1943)
3. The Folk of the Faraway Tree (1946)
4. Up the Faraway Tree (1951)
There are also the Noddy collections and then as she gets a bit older the as I call them "Jolly hockey sticks" Mallory towers etc.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Wizard of Oz books, the various Fairy Books (Pink, Blue, Rose, Orange, etc. - all are available in a compendium now it seems), Harriet the Spy, Alice in Wonderland, Amelia Bedelia books, the Ramona books, Bridge to Terabithia, the Borrowers books, Roald Dahl, definitely the Little House books (anything in a series so there was always more to enjoy)... would Lemony Snicket be enjoyable yet? Daniel Pinkwater, Aesop's Fables, the Brothers Grimm, the Beatrix Potter books, Swiss Family Robinson... that's what I've got tonight.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Oh - The Little Lame Prince, the Secret Garden, and... some book about two girls who switch identities during the evacuation of British children during the Blitz? OH! And the Abigail (http://www.amazon.com/Abigail-Portia-Howe-Sperry/dp/0871951487/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222851372&sr=1-8) book, which taught me the word "portmanteau." I had the doll exclusively made by the Brown County Folks shop and everything.

[riarambles.livejournal.com]

I think the first Betsy-Tacy book takes place when the girls are around 4 or 5, so it might be appropriate, although not exactly taking place within the last 50 years.

[redbird]

No recommendations, but a thought on the people who are reading their 3.5-year-olds things like The Hobbit: the children may just be enjoying the company or the rhythms of the words. Some years ago, I was visiting some people who had a five-year-old son. After dinner, he brought a book over and asked me to read it to him. Fine, I can read Spanish aloud. At the very end, I asked him, as one sometimes does, if he knew what a particular word that I'd just read meant. That was when I found out that the child knew no Spanish whatsoever (and neither did his parents). But he had clearly enjoyed himself, and had specifically asked for that book. The pictures weren't anything special, as far as I recall.

That doesn't mean I'm recommending Tolkien for Alex, just that it's possible the people who would are neither lying nor raising incredibly precocious geniuses.

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

Toys Go Out by Emily Jenkins is a wonderful, wonderful book.

It's about a toy sting ray, buffalo, and rubber ball, who have adventures - like going in the washing machine, or being brought to school for show-and-tell. They deal with a lot of small-kid anxieties in a way that's not patronizing, but still manages to be warm and reassuring, and there are lovely black-and-white illustrations. It's also episodic enough that you can read one story a night and stop there.

I'm on my way to the library, so I'll think of more!

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I just discovered that Toys Go Out has a sequel, Toy Dance Party.

I'll also recommend Sara Pennypacker's Clementine books - they're hilarious stories of a girl who does things like try to cut her own hair or write a terrible recommendation letter to prevent her teacher from going to Africa. They read a little like an updated Ramona.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

There's a sudden huge jump sometime during three, or there was for Z, when he wanted to go from mostly pictures to mostly words. He was nearly four when we read him LtW&tW and The Hobbit, and he lollopped them up by then, but six months earlier would have been too young.

The thing I'd recommend trying next would be the Moomins, Tove Jansen, start with Finn Family Moomintroll.

[(Anonymous)]

You can never have too much Moomins. Or is that 'too many'? I'm particularly pleased that now the serial strips are becoming available in English again at long last (and for the first time in book form), so that one can also take the intermediate step of reading the strips, which, by nature, are heavily (and wonderfully) illustrated.