As it turns out, you like to know your children are reading something half decent too, because every time I have posted book recommendations (here, here, here, here) – I have had some lovely responses. And because I am highly motivated by any kind of external praise, I’m back with more.
Starting with one I mentioned previously on Instagram – and one that was recommended to me by the people at Parrot Street Book Club :
TIN
Jacob (9) ripped through this in a day or two and loved it. Sort of a Brave New World/ robotics / AI / intro to personal identity for the pre-teen. Big hit!
MUDDLE EARTH / THE EDGE CHRONICLES/ BARNABY GRIMES / FERGUS CRANE
Here in the UK / Here in Canada
Also for Jacob, I spied some Chris Riddell and Paul Stewart collaborations in the library and they have all been excellent fun reads (there are lots of them), ranging from slightly harder going (the Edge Chronicles) to a little simpler (Fergus Crane). We already loved Chris Riddell for his Ottoline series, but now we love him even more.
DRAGON MASTERS
Here in the UK / Here in Canada
Elsa (7) has been on a huge Roald Dahl binge lately and so I have been trying to find something, anything, to offer up a bit of variety that might be tolerated: these Dragon Master books were not the most developed plot lines BUT are a good easy-ish read, lots of pictures and with popularity of the How to Train your Dragon series in our household, anything dragon-related normally goes down well.
Hugo got the memo re dragon paraphernalia
BITTY BOT
Here in the UK / Here in Canada
Wilf (2), absolutely loved this robot picture book – great rhyming text that didn’t make me want to bang my head against the wall after reading it multiple consecutive times.
FARMYARD TALES
Farmyard Tales, set of 20 here in the UK, here in Canada/US (UPDATE: the UK book people link is currently out of stock but available here – not quite such a satisfyingly thrifty deal though)
On the subject of picture books, have I mentioned the Poppy and Sam series before? They are excellent for preschoolers – a farmyard setting obviously, with trains and firemen in various stories.
But the real dream is the text – printed super clearly (no fancy ‘a’s, for example – so they are great for emerging readers – Mim (5), is really enjoying reading them independently.
A particularly nice touch is that they have a story running across the top of each page – a short simple sentence – with a couple of slightly more complex sentences running across the bottom of each page, which you can read aloud to your child or leave out entirely. Also my nephew is called Sam so we enjoy reading the series if only to talk about what cousin Sam might be up to RIGHT NOW.
Okay! More soon. It’s been a bit quiet around here and that’s because having five small children is a lot like having four small children except, you know, a bit busier.
Busy.
tMatM x