Chapter books update.

[rivka]

A while back, I asked for recommendations for read-aloud chapter books. Since there was a lot of interest in the topic, I figured I'd provide an update about which books have worked well for us.

So far we've tried:

The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne.
I don't have to supply a plot summary for this one, right? A few of the stories went over well, but other stories are fairly pointless from a three-year-old's perspective. We never got that far into it. Principally valuable at this point because it started us off on chapter-book reading, although I'm sure she'll like it more when she's a bit older.

My Father's Dragon and The Dragons of Blueland, by Ruth Stiles Gannett.
Little boy rescues dragons from terrible predicaments, using only his ingenuity and an oddball set of supplies. These books are amazing. Really, really wonderful. Alex just completely ate them up. There is a lot of adventure, but almost nothing is actually scary. The plots move quickly. These books are charming and funny and don't show their age at all.

Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Little girl grows up in the backwoods of Wisconsin in the 1870s. We read half of this very quickly, and then stopped. Some of the chapters make for great read-alouds. Others, like, uh, the hog-butchering chapter, not so much. We've had some interesting conversations about how people used to live. I guess we might take this one to Williamsburg, even though the period is off. Alex is still very fond of Laura and Mary, but she doesn't really ask for me to read this one. She's getting Little House in the Big Woods paper dolls for Christmas.

Mr. Popper's Penguins, by Richard and Florence Atwater.
Polar-obsessed housepainter raises a family of penguins in his suburban home. We started off fine with this one, and then Alex got bored after a few chapters and we didn't continue. I had to do a lot of modification of old-fashioned language. She might like this more in a year or two. I thought it was charming.

James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl.
Abused little boy rolls off for adventure inside a giant peach, accompanied by giant insects. Alex's verdict: "Really good, but a little bit scary." We gulped this book down in just a couple of days, although I confess that I skipped the very long songs that the Centipede sings. There's a lot of brisk adventure and not too much description in this book, which is good for a three-year-old. Michael thought Alex would be traumatized by James's mean aunts, but she seemed intrigued by them instead.

Ramona the Pest and Ramona the Brave, by Beverly Cleary.
A little girl lives a little girl's life. Massive, massive hits. Ramona the Brave is 190 pages long. We got it from the library on Sunday afternoon, and finished it this morning. Plus, Alex has been pretending that Ramona is her friend who comes to her parties. I wasn't sure how much she would get these stories, because they're very elementary-school-centric, but apparently Ramona's appeal is universal. Her beautiful new red boots get stuck in the mud. Another kid copies her owl picture. She's simultaneously excited and a little creeped out by Halloween. Just, you know, kid stuff. I'm loving the books, and so is Alex.

Where next? One of the children's librarians sent us home with Ursula LeGuin's Catwings. Alex is plugging for Ramona and Her Father, although I remember it being kind of sad. And I've ordered Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle from an Amazon Marketplace seller. It feels like the whole world of reading is open to us now. We're having a lot of fun.

Comments

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

The Little House books someone mentioned above are really nice - my library has a bunch, and Elena loves them. Basically, each one is an abridged chapter - with gorgeous full-color illustrations - from the original source. "Going To Town" is nice, and there's "Summer in the Big Woods" (I think) and "Dance at Grandpa's" and so on.

What about Thornton Burgess? I haven't looked at that series lately, but I see them on the shelf at the library and remember loving them as a child. I don't know how appropriate they'd be..... a lot of anthropomorphized animals, IIRC.

Beverly Cleary has a couple of great memoirs. A Girl From Yamhill is the first one, and I can't remember the second......

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yes, we have four of the illustrated "My First Little House" books, and they are wonderful. We have Winter Days in the Big Woods, Summertime in the Big Woods, Prairie Day, and Dance at Grandpa's. That's what made her initially excited to have "a big book about Laura and Mary."

What about Thornton Burgess?

Well, librarian-in-training, maybe you could advise me on that. ;-)

I looked at some on Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/b#a717), and they seemed very, very old-fashioned in their language and style. But yeah, I remember liking them too. I can picture exactly where they kept them in the Booth School library, under the windows that led to the library classroom where we saw filmstrips.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I'm working tomorrow night, and I'll take a look at the Thornton Burgess books. :)

I think once we work our way through my library's picture book "Little House" series, we'll move on to the big book.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I loved Thornton Burgess; my old-book-pusher grandfather scoured the city to find me all of them.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I flipped through The Story of Reddy Fox, and didn't think the language seemed too bad.

The other one I thought of was Junie B. Jones (author's name..... Parker, I think), who is sort of a more modern Ramona - but I think she'd be better received a couple of years from now.