Which book makes you sigh when your child picks it up?

[KindergartenKop]

There are a few books I hate reading, usually the overly long ones. My DS loves a massive octonauts book but it goes on forever! He also loves Babar which is cute but the stories are weird, a bit racist and written in really tricky french handwriting.

Which books do you dread your DC choosing?

Oh no I love you choose!! DS always wanted to be naked on roller skates wearing a fruit hat

@mommybear1 ha! “He looks in the box, at last 2 socks!, and half a dozen empties and the remains of a kebab”

All of the mog books! DD loves them and wants them read constantly. I can't stand them. I resorted to buying the audio books to avoid reading them.

Another vote for the bloody Mr Men. So long-winded and the whole universe/notion of Mr Men is just weird (I'm overthinking it, I know). Also, Mr Tall appears to chance size constantly when compared to the items/other Mr Men around him. And Mr Tickle is a dirty perv.

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. It is soooooo long, and by the time little cats A, B and C have appeared, I feel like it should be over. But there are still another 23 little cats to go!

Agree with Babar. Mum gets killed by poachers, old elephant dies eating poisonous mushrooms... not exactly a cheerful story!

Mog books because I must read them at least 5 nights a week! Especially the one with the mousedogbird.

Zog and the flying doctors for the same reason.

I feel like we have so many books but it's always the same ones that get chosen. I've made a list this week of lots of new ones to buy in the hope that I might get to read something different for a while at least.

Don't think anyone's said the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series yet

Charlie and Lola books, or the really long Peppa Pig ones. I do really good impressions of all the voices though I think 😂

The Paddington picture book - my 3 yo was obsessed with this for a while and I had to read it every time he went to bed (2x per day) for weeks on end. It’s just that bit too long for it to be fun to read that often!

A Squash and a Squeeze and Tales From Acorn Wood (both by Julia D) got hidden when our eldest was little as both husband and I hated reading them so much!

I also cannot stand the Horrid Henry books and get the rage whenever eldest brings them home to read with me. Such a hideous character!

Charlie and Lola books are awful.

The Tiger that came to tea gives me rage.

The Kevin and Katie carrot one from Aldi is awful, dc2 loves it.

I’ve always found Anne Fine books a bit dull. I just never read them to dc. Dc1 has been given two as reading books from school and is complaining about how boring they are.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Mr Men books, they are so hard to read. Never noticed as a child how wordy they are.

My dc are older now but when they were young, it's got to be bloody Tiara Club books. Where EVERY other word was WRITTEN in CAPITALS

Another vote for Charlie and Lola. I'm sure they are very cute and quirky but they simply do not flow in a Fife accent.

@SmallHaddockAndChips
Horrid Henry isn't that bad a character. It's his parents I can't stand. They make no effort to hide the fact that they infinitely prefer Peter and I think Henry is resigned to the fact that he will never do right in their eyes so is acting out.
Or maybe I'm overthinking it.

Like many PPs I hate books based on Tv programmes. I was given about 5 PJ Masks books to read consecutively recently and kept flipping the pages backwards and forwards convinced I'd missed a page or two. But nope. They are just very, very poorly written.

And why are those kinds of books always written in the present tense? "Ryder calls all the pups to the lookout. Marshall races ahead." Just adds to their shiteness.

I'd also ban all Axel Scheffler books if I could. His illustrations are wonderful but he can't write for toffee.

We're going on a bear hunt.

Not in this house you're not.

The Jolly fucking Postman. I've hidden it. I gate that fucking book. It takes so long to get the little letters and cards out of the envelopes.

I also hate TV books. We had a doc mcstuffins book given to us. Total poo. It's been donated.

Any of the Ladybird fairy tales. I bought them in a set and soon wished I hadn’t but DD loves them. Especially The Princess and the Frog. The heroines are saccharine, empty-headed femme-bots, the men are abusive and creepy and the stories are told in the longest, most boring way possible. I used to skim over the worst bits and reduce the paragraphs to single sentences but so can’t do that now she can read Horrible things.

DS1 had a collection of Disney stories, his favourite being 'Cars'. I'm breaking into a cold sweat just thinking about it now. The writing was bloody awful and it went on forever. I fell asleep reading it a couple of times and got short shrift from DS. Luckily DS2 hated it - I knew there was something I liked about him!

The Crap Flap books: Axel fucking Shuffler and his fucking horizontally bisected pages. I have binned a few Julia Donaldsons too. There's an awful non-fiction book about diggers that I've hidden, hopefully never to resurface again.

@bottomfellout

...sly little fucks...

Dinosaur drip. I hate it and have managed to hide it successfully for a few weeks now

Highway Rat by Julia Donaldson because the rhythm is just weird. All the Winnie The Witch ones. She is a crap witch. The Beast Quest series, all 90 billion of them. Formulaic drivel. But most of all the bloody awful Captain Valiant books! Such utter, utter dross.

I love some of these..mr men and highway rat especially.
I absolutely detest Beastquest.,,formulaic crap.

Hated Horrid Henry - reading the stories aloud make you feel like you're stuck in the middle of one long, tiresome argument.

I agree with all the TV and film tie ins. MIL also went through a phase of picking up DS1 those little boxes of 6 tiny books until they infested the entire house and he was obsessed with them and we had to read about 9 a night because they didn't count as normal stories. Half of them were baby books and had one word per page and half of them were god awful TV tie ins meant to teach counting or manners or some shit. He was about 3 or 4 at the time. We moved country when he was nearly 5 and I car booted them gleefully! I still find them turning up around the house.

Also yes god You Choose. MN was obsessed with this book when DS1 was little and so when I saw it at a school book sale I snapped it up. The other mum selling it was probably cackling in glee. It goes on forever and DS1 could never make a decision so he wanted everything. It is good for teaching English as a foreign language to kids though. They would all get so excited when I brought it out.