Great Books to Read to Your Kids

 

A list of my all-time favorite books to read to your children:

Bible stories – there are any number of children’s Bible stories books. I had a great collection put out by Arch books when I was a child which I saved and read to my child as well. I read one a night plus one fiction book. It is good to show your child where your priorities and your heart are and seal those stories away in their minds.

Dr. Suess – they are all great but I especially love 1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red fish, Blue fish and Green Eggs and Ham. All of his books are bright and colorful and encourage imagination and rhyming. Plus they are just fun to read! (Oh the Places You’ll Go is better for an older audience and a great gift idea for when your child is graduating.)

Little Critter books by Mercer Mayer – all of these are imaginative and enjoyable. They are also great for interaction because in the pictures you can search for a little mouse, spider and/or grasshopper.

Love you Forever by Robert Munch – I have trouble reading this book without a tear in my eye. It is so heartwarming and shows the love of a family. This is the type of love you want to develop with your child.

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingles Wilder – this is a great book to get your child interested in history. It takes you back in time with heartwarming clarity. I love all the books in this series including the ones that came afterwards by other authors depicting the life of other people from Laura’s family tree. Laura grows up in this series of books so you might want to read the first three and by that time your little one will be reading on their own and will want to finish the series on their own.

Junie B. Jones – I love this whole series. They are just a pleasure to read because they bring you joy. No matter the situation it is always told in a humorous way. These books present you with the opportunity to talk to your child about how they would react in this situation or how they would feel about it – great teachable moments can come from reading these books to your child or with them.

Reading to your child and having your child read to you is a great way to encourage your child to read. They love to spend time with you and they have done studies that say if you read to your child they do better in school. I always read a bedtime story to my daughter and when she started school she would also read one to me as part of her homework. As she got a little older she would read to herself and it became a habit to read before going to sleep. During the summer months I would encourage her to read by offering her money for new books. She would keep a list all summer and at the end I would give her a dollar for each one and we would take it to the bookstore to buy more. It was a system that worked really well and we both looked forward to it every summer.

Being a self-proclaimed book worm we always had lots of books around our house. A trip to the mall was never complete without checking out the bookstore and we were always browsing second hand book stores as well. Now that my child has grown, these are the books that I have kept to (hopefully) read to my grandchildren one day. 

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Part I and II

By J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany

I read the Harry Potter books as they came out and then I read them to my daughter. We went to each movie together, sometimes for the midnight showing so we could see it as soon as possible. I remember late nights with my daughter and a carload of her friends, they would spend the night and I would tiptoe out the door in the morning and try to keep my eyes open through the workday. We loved those books, the characters and the imaginative world J.K. Rowling had created. This spring we even took a trip to Florida specifically to visit Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure for the Harry Potter World – which is an amazing place for any fan to visit.

Being such big fans we were very excited about the new book and I went to the store first thing on July 31^st to pick up my copy. I wasn’t able to read it right away as we were busy but I read it as soon as I could. I know that when you build something up you have high expectations and often times you enjoy something more if it comes as a pleasant surprise, well my expectations for this book were way too high and I ended up very disappointed.

First of all this is written as a play and therefore you lose all the heart, and depth of the story. It is as bare bones as possible and not a fun format to read. I was also very disappointed with the premise of the story, how going back in time changes the future. This has been done so many times already that it seems lame for an author with such an impressive imagination. I found it quite boring and dull, only getting a little better near the end when Harry’s son starts to become a character and not a hollow name on a page.

I won’t be able to see the play as I live too far away but I am hoping they make this into a movie because I think it would be much more enjoyable that way. I’m the type of person who likes to read the book before seeing the movie so you know the background and what the characters are thinking and feeling but in this case I think the opposite will be true.

I feel I set myself up for disappointment with this book – expecting it to be as well written and thought out as the previous books but I am glad that I read it because now I know for myself. Plus, I need to have the hard cover version to sit on the shelf beside my other Harry Potter books but I am disgusted that they charged so much money for it when it is obviously not nearly the quality of the other books in the series. Sadly disappointed in the poor quality of this book.