the most overrated childrens books

Mr Men and Little Miss = shite.

dick king-smith

Charlie and Lola are soo difficult to get into the rhythm of reading out aloud.
Guess How Much I Love You is boring and any Teddy Bear compendium stories are a no no. My DD would not let me read any of them to her!! Percy the Park Keep Stories were hidden by my daughter at the age of 4 and at 5 1/2 she won't let me read them to her!!
Also love Where the Wild Things Are!

Loathe Guess How Much I Love You and particularly loathe Tiger Who Came To Tea - so much so that I wouldn't have a copy in the house. Sexist tripe, esp. the bit where the dad has to come and rescue them and take them out for tea.

so true mimsum, we all pee ourselves at eyeore when he falls in the river - our favourite moment . such dry wit. tbh it's a bit hard to read aloud though - one chapter goes on a fair amount of time. i tend to precis.

pet hates are the usual suspects - anything thomas or mr men (they're off to the charity shops this year) and anything off the telly (dora/bob the builder etc) - generally poorly written and boring. obv the kids love them

how can anyone say Winnie the Pooh is overrated - the books are works of comic genius - and if you doubt me, listen to Alan Bennett reading them on CD

Bear Hunt is so hard to read...I can't get the rhythm at all. I like the pictures.

Mr Men are fucking boring to read - it's all about the visuals.

My DH hates a book called Hey Tiger What About Your Tail? Which is basically a Tiger trying to be lots of different things like an astronaut or a chef but held back by his dullard middle class 'family' and forced to conform which is the ultimate moral - don't try and have any ambition!

We may be over-reading that one I think...

Also GHMILUVU is cute to own but tedious as hell to read.

we love Bear Hunt and Little Beaver and the Echo...lay off them vipers

we hate the hungry caterpillar and guess how much i love you
boak

beatrix potter is an odd one in our house as dd1 just keeps saying "and then we will eat him, won't we mummy" "all up in our tummies" during it so i've given up tbh

Yes yes what have they done to Miffy? It's awful. I still have some of the 1970s Miffy books from when I was a child, and they are lovely. Sparse text and no attempt at rhyme. Beautiful. But when I looked at the new versions in the bookshop I couldn't bear them. The rhyming text is so twee and badly done. It's such a shame.

Ruddy Gruffalo, boring & obvious.
Mr. Men.
DS-5yo loves Beatrix Potter, mind.

the troubkle with Miffy is that it was fab in th eoriginal Dutch, but the translations (esp where they have treid to rpeserve the rhyme) are generally ghastly

There is a special place of hatred in my heart for Miffy And The New Baby

I hated the Mr Men books - I once went on a Brownie pack holiday which was awful in all sorts of ways and they read us one of these stories each night - I was 7 and there were older girls there - zzzzzz, sooo boring.

Love Where the Wild Things Are, Julia Donaldson though I don't like Smartest Giant as much as DS1 (2.5) for whom that and Stickman are real favourites and Laura Ingallas Wilder - I like those details in Little House in the Big Woods. Also like Dr Seuss.

I was disappointed when I bought a box set of Miffy books that they're not actually that great to read aloud.

Down with Thomas

Hoorah for Wild Things, it helped my ds overcome his fear of monsters (Be Still!!)

Actually I have also read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books recently and they were not quite as I remembered them (loved them as a child). The first one is a real yawn- most of it reads like a carpentry lesson!

Can't stand those fairy books either or anything with Disney's name on the front!

Both my kds and I LOVE The Gruffalo and the Gruffalo's Child.

I think Thomas books are soooooooooo boring!!!

DH has just rounded up and given away all our Mr Men books claiming he'd rather chew his own arm off than read another one. Fair play, they are awful. Would happily do the same to Thomas and his 5000 tedious friends but ds would never recover.

Dr Seuss is amazing, though. Surprised he's getting such a pasting - they are comic masterpieces. But perhaps it's what you're used to - I grew up with every Dr Seuss ever written whereas dh doesn't really get them because they never had them as children. Similarly I don't mind Beartrix Potter but would never seek them out whereas dh and his siblings all think they are wonderful.

Hairy bleedin Maclary! (My DDs are 13 and 11 and I still know them off by heart!)

If we are talking rated by critics then Harry Potter by a mile. Books over loved by my own children, I'm not sure. Perhaps I've forgotten them! I must admit I didn't tend to give the children that much choice when they were small, as I only bought books that I liked after much bookshop browsing, and if they got over read they tended to accidentally "disappear" for a while

My main hate is for badly made, badly illustrated, uninteresting stories that scan poorly and especially pink books. Sparkles are an additional bane IMO. But luckily there are many many lovely well written and illustrated books, so it's not really a problem.

Nowadays I get to read them all my favorite books, and they can choose to read rubbish on their own if they really must. They seem to understand this (Although dd did try and make me buy/read Rainbow cutie crap, and got quite affronted when I refused).

I love most of the books mentioned so far!!

I like 'Peace at Last' is great to read out loud if you go to town with all the noises.

Really love 'Bear Hunt' too. Often when I'm out walking with DD she'll chant bits from it while pretending to swishy swash through grass or squelch squerch in the mud.

The only books I agree with here are the Mr Men and Thomas books, which I thought I'd really love reading to DD but was dismayed to find were tedious in the extreme!

oh how could I forget how much I detest Biff, Kipper and sodding Floppy.

I loathe sanctimonious, dullard Noddy especially the originals.I also can't stand Thomas, so impossibly dreary. But I do like Bear Hunt.

Love Bear Hunt.

I must confess that I went gooey over 'Guess How Much I Love You' and other books of that ilk when dd1 was a tiny pfb, but now I see how sickly it is.

IMO one of the most overrated books is 'Peace at Last' - depressing plodding story that ends with no resolution, with boring illustrations and no rhythm to the text. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be funny, but it isn't.

Where the Wild Things ARe = most overrated book ever!!
Tiger who came to tea = sublime, love it!

I like Going on a Bear Hunt, and The Tiger Who Came to Tea.

We used to have the boxed sets of Thomas and Beatrix Potter but they have emigrated to the attic!

I enjoyed reading Roald Dahl as a child but hated reading his books to my ds1 (especially the BfG). I'm rather relieved that he is now old enough to read them to himself.

Guess How Much I Love You has great illustrations but I am dubious about the message.

The Gruffalo grew on me.

I also prefer Dr Seuss to ORT.

My favourite bedtime story is The Night Pirates, but the boys don't ask for that so often any more.

I really don't enjoy reading The Gruffalo, but I love The Tiger Who Came To Tea.