To think the worst answer you can get to "Which story would you like?" is..

[catgirl1976]

"If I Ran The Zoo"

It's sooooo long and it's such a tongue twister.

DS is 2.5 and I often get nice selections like Owl Babies or Oh No George.

But I got unlucky tonight and got 4670 pages of Dr. Zeuss' finest.

I like the story well enough, it's just a bloody epic to read :)

[Vinomum]

I have to confess that I bloody hate bedtime and can't wait till they're old enough to wave off upstairs and sort themselves out. The absolute worst book ever IMO is The Pirate Catcher, awful made-up tongue-twistery unpronounceable words written in dark script on dark pages so I go half blind reading it. Closely followed by Wacky bastarding Wednesday which goes on and on and on, particularly when DS2 loses track of how many wacky things he's spotted and has to start ALL OVER AGAIN.

[drspouse]

"What's beer, Mummy?"

It's spicy, sweetheart. You wouldn't like it.

[cashmiriana]

Postman Pat and the Rainy Day.

It was DD1's favourite when she was about 3.
It was very long and very wordy. And she knew every single word so my attempts at paraphrasing / embroidering / doing anything to move the story on, were all in vain.

God I hated Peter Fogg and his sodding tractor stuck in the mud. I thought having it on video would mean we could read different books. It didn't work. She just asked for more Postman Pat books and stupidly we bought them for her. A whole year of my life wasted on the worst postman in history.

We had the same thing a few years later with Charlie and Lola with DD2. She insisted that I read the books EXACTLY the same as they were performed on television. My Lola was pretty good but she got cross with my terrible impression of Lotta. I actually liked Charlie and Lola and was quite sad when DD2 grew out of them.

[Marcipex]

Stickman, I really can't stand it.

[Marcipex]

And Bear Hunt. It's popularity is a mystery to me.

[DoJo]

Anything by Julia Donaldson - I seem to be the only parent who can't stand her books so have to keep this under my hat in real life lest social services are informed of my incompetence. After a year of Wow Said the Owl, I am glad that one has been abandoned in favour of more varied ones, but I am currently really pushing the library as at least any book that gets on my tits will be returned after three weeks whenever the hell I am sick of them, current record is two days.

[GiveMeCheesecake]

Yes, yes to fucking Mr Men.

Thankfully DS doesn't choose them anymore. They're so wordy and boring. They use three sentences to explain something when one would do.

I also hate Chicken Licken, The Little Red Hen and all nursery rhyme books which require me to sing the entire bloody book!

I love Room on a Broom, Sometimes I Like to Curl Up in a Ball, Pip and Posy books.

[Hobnobissupersweet]

Mr Men books, it is years ago now and I still remember the horror ( shudders) nothing happens, and we all have to be the same. Roger Hargreaves should be tried for crimes to parents.

[SierpinskiNumber]

We loved Whacky Wednesday. We have an ancient copy.

I also loved There is a Monster at the end of this Book. It's a seseme street book. Burnies Hill was a lovely book too.

I threw out books I didn't like. There are too many great kids books out there to read ones you don't like.

[MarshaBrady]

We're still on Mr Men nearly every night with a few others thrown in. I can't get on with the wordy wizard at all and Mr Brave is a bad one. I believe the last few were written by his son. The illustrations are off too, and there's a typo.

[Hakluyt]

What wbotu the Martin Waddell weepy ones? My children chose those to make me cry- evil vermin!

[mellicauli]

Where's Wally.? If isn't a story, therefore has no beginning, no end and it means bedtime is at least one more argument away..

[PicardyThird]

I love Dr Seuss. The Cat in the Hat is a Freudian allegory, with the cat (and/or Thing One and Thing Two) as the id and the fish as the super-ego. I had this realisation and found someone had already written an essay about it. Green Eggs and Ham is the only one I didn't always enjoy reading. The rest are fantastic and have been great for my bilingual children, for whom English is the minority language.

Mr Men and Thoman principally annoyed me for the dodgy messages, but also for the bad writing. I have never got Bear Hunt either. I like Flat Stanley - it very subtly sends the family up.

There's a theory about the Tiger who Came to Tea that it's about the Nazis, but the end doesn't fit with that. There was a great thread about it on here years ago. Might be in Classics.

I love reading aloud to my boys and always have. We are doing the Swallows and Amazons series now and it is a joy :)

[PicardyThird]

Thomas, not Thoman, obviously.

[yesiamwhoyouthinkiam]

The broom noisy version (with all the sounds). Hate it because if DS misses one button he freaks out and insists I start again from the beginning!

[BustyDeLaGhetto]

BoneyBack
"I don't remember Hamster Huey having quite that sarcastic tone of voice."
"Or doing everything so fast"

[kennyp]

mr men used to get right on my tits. mr whoever has a problem. mr whoever goes for a walk. problem disappears.

those awful generic books with no author on the cover, i.e. those book of the disney filmss etc . i like a book written by someone (anyone!!!!)

i loved oooh la la lottie though. could read that every night (not that anyone's asked me to. yet) (joke)

[PiratePanda]

You know what? This thread has inspired me to cull DS' books and take all the wanking Mr Men to the charity shop. I hate their wordiness and their conservative moralising and I'm sure DS will forget about them quite quickly...

[Withmyfeetinthesink]

I hate 'Peepo' - there, I've said it.

I hate all of those twee olde-worlde ones. Modern children's fiction is so much better. Love Dr Seuss though and that's probably considered old now.

Mine are past reading to in terms of not being able to do it themselves, but youngest still likes it for comfort a lot of the time, which is lovely. I'll miss it when it's gone completely .

There were dark days though when he had a book that was nothing but pictures of farm machinery and lorries. That, as bedtime reading, was dire - made me almost offer 'Peepo' instead . .

[JustAShopGirl]

Lullabyhullaba-bloody-lloooooooooooooooo - my kids are 12 1nd 13 and we can ALL still remember every bloomin word!!!!!!

[Voodoobooboo]

Six Dinner Sid. Every night for about 2 years. And, when it fell to pieces, one of my bastard brothers bought DS a replacement. I've never known such rage.

[Tanith]

Oh, I do hate those Disney books!

DD doesn't have any, but I'm sometimes confronted with them when I babysit. Too many words, poor story - I find myself skipping as much as I can and I've never had a child pull me up on it yet.

[Keletubbie]

My Uncle is a Hunkle. I hate it.

[MrTumblesBavarianFanbase]

Hate Topsy and Tim so much that I recycled the ones we were given. Meg and Mog would be bearable if there wasn't so much black print on dark blue background. Really dislike the scared Mog (without Meg). Don't mind Mr Men at all, and 'That's not my' are blessedly short... You choose is banned at bed time as all 3 kids want to choose, it can take a solid 30 mins with all the discussions.

DD is nearly 9 and still likes to be read to, and adore s the obscure 'Puppy Patrol' series - I am so sick ofNeil Parker, irritating DPG loving know it all who does really stupid things like go down old mine shafts or down cliff paths in the dark after dogs in need... Bet nobody else has heard of them though, we acquired a big pile second hand... Very long chapters too. One book is OK, but there must be at least 25, with over 100 pages each...

[flyingspaghettimonster]

We just made sure only to has books we liked around at bedtime, so it was all "slinky Malinky and sticky beak Sid" and all the Mog the cat books. My firstborn got obsessed with "Mog and the baby" for a whole though so that we were reading it multiple times a day. My husband added the word "sodding" before every word "baby" to entertain himself. It's been ten years and I still giggle at the memory of him reading "look who's here; Mrs. Clutterbuck has brought us her sodding baby, we're going to look after it while she goes shopping" and "will my sodding baby be alright with your cat?" "Oh yes, Mog Loves sodding babies"...