the most overrated childrens books

Dr Seuss varies - some of the longer ones get very tiresome, but Green Eggs and Ham and the Sneetches book (with the stories about the empty pants and Too Many Daves) are classics.

Anything Thomas - boring and moralistic, gah
Mr Men - yaaawwwnn
Guess How Much I Love You - sweet I suppose, but meh, call that a punchline?

And No Matter What, it's lovely and I like the pics but the final starlight bit f*cking annoys me. Yes stars die and their light goes on after that, but not forever! Eventually the light from the dead star will also stop coming and then you will see the star go out. This is the kind of technical space science detail that matters to DS and it annoys me every time.

Bugger the bedtime stories, we should read threads from Mumsnet out loud til the children either laugh or die of boredom. I've had the time of my life reading this thread, and have laughed til the tears have trickled down my face..

to add my 2p worth, I'm surprised at which books I loved as a child but find them like a custodial sentence to read:
Naughty Little Sister books - Dorothy Edwards (dd loves them)
Thomas the TE (banned)
Winnie the Pooh (haven't heard the Alan Bennett spin on it yet, may be converted)
Charlie and Lola (call the Social on that lot, not a parent in sight)
Dr Seuss (wtf)

I've found the only way round this lot is to buy audio books which are used on headphones. Gruffalo acceptable (just) - loved the Christmas animation. Hungry Caterpillar OK but I think it encourages greed.
Some I've loved just for the retro quality of them (when men were men etc) - The Tiger Who Came to Tea/Mog etc. I'm a child of the seventies!

I have always hated Owl Babies

Elmer books - I like the pictures, but the text reads so clunkily.

Anything without words, because I really can't be arsed to make up a story (bought Rosie's Walk while feeling nostalgic, then quietly stuck it in the charity shop bag six months later)

Anything with speech bubbles: I can't get into the flow of reading them. Meg and Mog are the worst offenders (though again, I like the pics).

Anything with a princess and/or fairies in it - especially bad if the cover is pink or is sparkly.
TV tie ins especially ITNG
Thats not my.. books we have to read them twice - once properly, second time to find the mouse
Really looking forward to the day that dd's can read by themselves - they can read the crap and I'll read the good stuff

We love Bear Hunt -- DS enjoys talking about all the things in the pictures and making the noises. And gasping at the bear.

Guess How Much I Love You is so dull and half-arsed, it beggars belief.

Also can't stand Mr Men and Little Miss (wtf?)!

There are very few books that I actually enjoy reading to my 5 year old - but I do like Shirley Hughes (Dogger, Alfie gets in first), Hairy McClairy, Harry and the Dinosaurs books and Thomas. But it's not really about what I like - it's what he likes! I get annoyed when he forces me to read books to him at bedtime that aren't stories.

I agree 100% about the cutesy, Guess How much I love you type books - yuk! And we were given a Tweenies book years ago which is awful - but then it is my all-time favourite worst-ever Kids TV show.

My eldest is nearly 10 and we have done all the Harry Potters which I thought were great. We're now onto the Alex Riders - we read some to him a bedtime then he reads some himself.

We love Bear Hunt - we've had so much fun with it, and DS loves going on real bear hunts around the house and garden and out on dog walks. I don't like Bear in a Cave, though - can't get into the rhythm of it at all and DS only ever wants to look at the page with the train. Even the CD of Michael Rosen reading it sounds awkward and stilted.

I agree about the Thomas books - there are basically only two stories (train ignores sage advice and comes off rails/falls off bridge/hurtles to doom and/or train is horrible to another train and gets its comeuppance). The original ones are marginally better than the endless flood of dumbed-down new adaptations that are constantly being spewed out, though.

Slinky Malinki and Hairy McLairy are the all-time favourites around here. Scarface Claw is practically a deity in DS's eyes.

Hairy MacLary? Surely not?? " Slinky Malinky was down in the reeds...."

Elmer and the Obvious Moral Ending
Bloody Bear Hunt
hairy maclary
hamish the highland cow

Nice to see I'm not the only one who can't stand Miffy and the New Baby.Is it an awful translation? It's dire - doesn't scan, terrible forced rhymes, torture to read.

Julia Donaldson good tho esp Room on the Broom and The Magic Paintbrush.

Going on a Bear Hunt, don't really get why it's so popular...

Anither vote here for being v disppointed at modern Miffy, has anyone seen "Miffys Dream", it's not got any text just Miffy and a brown rabbit floating about on clouds, wtf!!

I HATE WINNIE THE POOH - so condescending

Some of the Beatrix Potter ones are a bit strange -- I agree with gaelicsheep about Squirel Nutkin, which gave one DD nightmares. There are others that all the DCs loved so much I could actually recite them in the dark. I can't stand preachy books like the awful Berenstain Bears series. Give me a plot and lots of words with more than one syllable, right from the start. And Dr Seuss is fine if the DCs read them for themselves, but it gets very, very tedious very fast if you allow any to creep into your bedtime story rota.

In fact I really struggle to choose books for my 3 year old as on a first look almost all of them look complete rubbish IMO.

Pretty much all TV spin-off books including the new Thomas series (the originals are just fine)

We're Going on a Bear Hunt - at least I thought so at first, but it grew on me and DS liked it

I like a lot of Beatrix Potter but some of them go on a bit and I cannot stand Squirrel Nutkin - I just don't get the so-called riddles at all.

Mr Men, definitely - absolute pile of tedious rubbish

I don't find Julia Donaldson's rhymes forced at all! I love reading them aloud...

My most overrated children's books:

Mr Men (but I sense DS will love them)
Sodding Thomas, won't have them in the house

MIFFY books! They are appalling. My mum got DS a boxed set of them, I thought 'aw, Miffy, blast from the past, nice little Belgian rabbit, etc' and then tried to read them to DS. They are trite beyond imagining. Maybe they didn't survive the translation?

That's Not My Arsehole, It's Too Hairy, etc. Usborne has a lot to answer for.

In the Night Garden tie-ins, as pointless as you'd expect.

Guess How Much I Love You - does anyone actually like that book?

I agree with you about Julia Donaldson, Quiltedrose, although I like Tiddler (with the exception of the icky writer friend on the last page).

For those of you who don't like bear hunt have you seen Michael Rosen reading it? Totally fab and makes you see the book in a new light. here

I HATE HATE HATE Dr Suess!!! Torture!

In the Night Kitchen. Great drawings, but what's it about?

I can't believe that anyone wouldn't like Julia Donaldson books. They are fab!!
I'm not keen on Bear hunt either. (thought I was the only one).
You can make bear hunt more interesting by doing voices and actions. That's probubly why my daughter likes it more than I do.

Oh, can I please add all of the Usborne Phonics books - in a desperate attempt to lob words with the same sound together, none of them actually make any sense.