To think the BEST answer to "what would you like me to read tonight" is...

[LEMmingaround]

For me, its a close run thing between The lion the witch and the wardrobe - despite having to miss the whole bit where Aslan dies, and any of E nesbits stories involving the Psammead or the pheonix. For when DD was younger, it was The cat in the hat, all the slinky malinki and hairy maclary stories.

yep - blatant TAAT :)

Where the wild things are.

hairy mclary

Each peach pear plum

Mog.

The Cat in The Hat - because I memorised about 80% of it and could "read" the story whilst MN'ing/drinking gin. No actual page-turning/book-holding required.

Ditto The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Gruffalo. . I possibly got into the voices in The Gruffalo a bit too much?

Useful parenting skills.

Bit gutted about DC1 being into chapter books now, can't memorise those so much. Love the Roald Dahl though.

Polly and the Wolf!

Dogger and Tiddler

Katie Morag. Although my accent is more northern than western isles.

The tiger who came to tea

The Snail and the Whale. I have been known to get teary. With looking back at me.

Peace at Last

Meg and Mog. I love those crazy, scary weirdos.

One Fish Two Fish or The Gruffalo

Cressida Cowell's Hiccup books. In fact she tweeted to me that she wrote them to be read out loud

The Bears of Papana River Valley.

Another vote for Peace at Last. We love the sound effects and my two year old has mastered the lot already despite not talking very much!

Zig

Zog

Old Bear or Winnie the Pooh because I know them well enough that i can actually read them with voices and sound like a normal mum reading a bedtime story, I'm severely dyslexic and tend to trip over words when reading new books out loud, it was ok when DD was small but now she can read she corrects me.

How about"actually mum I'm so tired I won't bother with a story tonight"?

The Cat in the Hat (which was tonight's choice) - I love how DS always seriously considers the question at the end of whether or not he would tell me if the cat in the hat had turned up
and The Pirates Next Door because it perfectly and very humorously captures the NIMBY attitude towards anyone different (which entertains me) whilst telling a fun pirate story for DS.

DH reads books like the Divergent trilogy (what he's reading at the moment) to DS1 (9) and DD1 (7) whilst I read fun books like The Cat in The Hat and Roald Dahl to DS2 and DD2 (both 4).

Ooh Belinda I read The Snail and the Whale for the first time tonight and it made me teary too. What a treat!

I was deeply disturbed by the cat in the hat at primary school and refused to read it, the thought of being left home alone and strange cat type person coming into my house left me traumatised

I had to read the Snail and the Whale pretty much every night for three years :)